Why Are People So Passive-Aggressive?

Do your team meetings look like everyone is going with the flow but feel like there’s an undercurrent of resistance, bitterness, or hostility? Are you frequently surprised by people who nod their heads, sign up for responsibilities, and then procrastinate, slow-roll, or undermine their accountabilities? Have you been told what someone says to your face differs from what they’re saying to your teammates behind your back? What is going on? Why are people so passive-aggressive?

This month, we’re going deep into this perennial problem for people and productivity: passive-aggressive behavior. Although we’ll get to various fixes, it’s important to start with an understanding of what constitutes passive-aggressive behavior and why it occurs.

What is Passive-aggressive Behavior?

Passive-aggressive behavior is a way of conveying aggressive feelings through passive means. Well, yeah, duh. (Say more, Liane.)

Ok, let’s break it down.

Aggressive Feelings

Aggressive feelings can include anger, bitterness, hostility, and frustration. Research by Hopewood and Wright (2012) suggests the three most characteristic emotional underpinnings of passive-aggressiveness are:

1) Irresponsibility. This is a form of immaturity where negative emotions lead to ineffective interpersonal behavior or neglect of responsibilities.

2) Contempt. This includes feelings of coldness, negativity, and mistrust of others, which can lead to an individual avoiding attachments.

3) Inadequacy.  This is a pattern of depressive and self-defeating feelings that result in a strong need for acknowledgment.

For a very small number of people, these are deep-seated feelings stemming from early trauma or toxic relationships. For most people you encounter at work, these feelings are situational and only problematic when certain scenarios arise (more on which organizational situations foster passive-aggressiveness below).

Passive Behaviors

Ok, so if those are the aggressive feelings, how might those feelings be expressed?

Passive behaviors are indirect ways people hurt, confuse, or resist the target of their aggression. They can be verbal, such as using excuses or sarcasm, or behavioral, such as prolonged silence or dismissive body language. These behaviors are often deliberate, but they can also be unintentional or unconscious manifestations of the person’s distress.

The main thing about passive-aggressive outlets is that they are hard to pinpoint and difficult to prove, making them a relatively safer approach to expressing anger.

Although the DSM-5 (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used to asses psychological disorders) no longer classifies Passive-Aggressiveness as a personality disorder, past editions provide a helpful schema for identifying passive-aggressive behaviors. They include:

“passively resists fulfilling routine social and occupational tasks;complains of being misunderstood and unappreciated by others;is sullen and argumentative;unreasonably criticizes and scorns authority;expresses envy and resentment toward those apparently more fortunate;voices exaggerated and persistent complaints of personal misfortune; andalternates between hostile defiance and contrition”.

APA (1994).

You might also be interested in this 21-question assessment of passive-aggressive behavior.

In more concrete organizational language, you might see a passive-aggressive colleague:

Nitpick at trivial details to delay progressPretend they didn’t hear you if they didn’t like what you were sayingGoing around formal authority and soliciting support outside the chain of commandUsing asynchronous methods to avoid direct communication (Post-It notes, emails, Slack barbs)Following the rules literally while contravening their intentAvoiding responsibility for tasksPlaying dumbProcrastinating and missing deadlinesWithholding necessary information from those who need itUnderachieving or otherwise “phoning it in.”

Passive-aggressive behavior is sometimes difficult to put your finger on but your gut is probably telling you that something is off.

Why Do People Choose to Be Passive-Aggressive?

I want to add one more important piece to the puzzle. If we’re talking about the majority of people who behave passive-aggressively not because of enduring personality issues but because of something happening in the situation, we need to talk about which situations make passive-aggressiveness more likely.

Fortunately, there is research that can help us understand the scenarios that make passive-aggressiveness more likely.

This study shows that it happens when:

people feel threatened and powerless,when they’re working in confusion or under considerable pressure,when the team dynamics are toxicif their leader uses a coercive, inflexible, or authoritative leadership styleif they are excluded from decision-making or planning that directly affects their work

Each of these situations is one where the negative emotions might be heightened, but expressing those emotions directly could be especially unsafe or costly.

Don’t Mistake This for Passive-Aggressiveness

Many other reasons might explain behaviors that at first appear to be passive-aggressive. Before you conclude that your colleague is expressing anger indirectly, consider whether they might be:

Behaving irresponsibly as a function of attention issues, disorganization, or poor motivation. This can be the case with people who have executive function challenges or mental health concerns.

or

Procrastinating or withholding direct communication because they feel inadequate and fear losing connection, affection, or respect. This might be true with co-workers prone to imposter syndrome or conflict avoidance.

Conclusion

We’re starting a series on passive-aggressiveness with the psychological underpinnings of the behavior to increase your empathy and help you understand what you’re dealing with. If a person behaves passively-aggressively, it’s a sign that something is wrong. And when something’s going wrong for a teammate, getting angry, being mean, or writing them off might feel good in the moment, but it won’t change anything for the better. Next time, we’ll talk about what you can do to try to turn things around.

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.), Washington

Hopwood, C. J., & Wright, G. C. (2012). A Comparison of Passive Aggressive and Negativistic Personality Disorders. Journal of Personality Assessment, 94(3), 296. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2012.655819

Johnson, N.J. and Klee, T. (2007). Passive-Aggressive Behavior and Leadership Styles in Organizations. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 14(2), 130-142.

Additional Resources

How to deal with passive-aggressive people

10 Ways to Help People Say Uncomfortable Things

Psychology Today’s primer on Passive-aggression

 

 

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