Vocabulary
There’s been some back and forth about the term “passive-aggressive” and what its exact meaning is. I’ve been using it loosely in what I took to be the vernacular sense, not in what I took to be any kind of technical sense. On being questioned about this, I looked it up; I hadn’t realized it was technical in quite that way, included in the DSM and all. It’s a personality disorder, by gum. I thought it was just a bit of outdated descriptive psychology of the kind that Woody Allen likes to throw around – a bit of pseudo-Freudianism.
What, exactly, is the difference? What’s the difference between an official personality disorder that appears in the DSM and an outdated bit of quasi-Freudian vocabulary? I, frankly, have no idea. The DSM also includes Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which always makes me laugh like a drain, because it’s me all over and because I don’t think of it as a disorder, I just think of it as an approach.
So anyway. I’ve been using it informally, not formally or technically, and I’m going to go on doing that, because people (most people) seem to know exactly what I mean by it, and because it describes something real, that we keep seeing. So what have I been meaning by it when using it informally?
I’ve been meaning (and I have in fact spelled this out a few times) being aggressive while trying to hang onto the credit for being non-aggressive. Having it both ways. Being bossy and censorious while pretending to be gentle and sweet.
I’ve never gotten along well with people like that. Never. I suppose that’s my Oppositional Defiant Disorder playing up again. I get all oppositional and defiant about them. I want to kick them until they drop the goody-goody act and admit they’re just being hostile and quarrelsome like the rest of us.
My view is, if you’re going to be bossy and censorious, then be it. Don’t pretend you’re being Little Saint Lovely of the Blossoms, just get on with it.
I also mean, sometimes, people who praise themselves without admitting that they’re doing it, at least when they are people who also do the bossy-censorious thing. People who say things like “oh my goodness I’m so amazed that everybody loves me so much.” That kind of thing makes my oppositional defiant demon laugh a coarse laugh and scratch its bum. Come on, sweety, you’re not amazed at all, you’re gloating and boasting. Don’t try to fool us – just say “excuse me for a minute while I gloat and boast.” And don’t combine “oh my goodness I’m so amazed that everybody loves me so much” with “if only all of you could be as loving and compassionate as I am everybody would love you so much too.” That’s fatal, darling, we see right through it.
That’s what I mean by passive-aggressive. How about you?
You mean like:
That’s another typical aspect: the “we” thing. “I’m going to talk about how ‘we’ should change ‘our’ behavior while making it abundantly clear that I don’t think I’m behaving badly at all.” It’s so transparent that the “we”s are really “you”s and the person is saying “You should behave like me.”
Ophelia, I just wanted to say, that I loved this post. I loved this post. There, I said it.
Well that’s not one of the best examples. James doesn’t actually position himself as SuperNice all that much. But the laser-like focus on tone to the exclusion of everything else, yet again…well yes, a little like that.
Good point about “we.” I meant to say about that and forgot.
So you’re an anti-tone troll…?
Hee. Well done, Emily.
Excuse me, let me step in here, I’m from Minnesota.
Yeah, the term started with the military, with the “disorder” being seen in soldiers. My ex-nephew (now in jail or dead, not sure) has this story: He was in the navy, and told to watch a certain dial and signal the CO if the dial went to the red. the dial was on the ship’s boiler. Next to the dial he was told to watch was a second dial. The second dial’s needle went into the red while the first one’s didn’t. Since he had only been told to report the first dial going into the red, he did not bother telling them about the second dial.
“That’ll show them” he told me he was thinking.
The ship did indeed sink after the boiler went haywire and eventually blew. But it wasn’t his fault because they never told him to look at the second dial.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, it’s just how we roll.
Let’s see….
Well, I think we all should get along better. When we take the approach I advocate and allow our believing Brethren to speak and don’t call them idiots, then we will succeed. Unfortunately, some of us let’s call them new atheist dicks, are so sure of themselves and their superior reason they attack others with such vituperation. We shouldn’t do that. We shouldn’t be nasty and say anything so offensive that might stop us building bridges. Of course, I’m not telling any of us to shut up, but to better engage others as friends, not enemies.
How’d I do? I’m as passive as they come. Any aggression in there?
And this is why most of us here intensely dislike Chris Stedman. He is the perfect embodiment of that vernacular definition (which is widely and uncontroversially shared).
I agree, how else can the average person use the term except in the vernacular,unless of course, you’re a posing wanker.
Yes, what’s particularly annoying about passive-aggressive people is the way they always seem to assume the moral high ground.
Well…
It’s such bull. The facade was never really all that convincing, but it was fun to see it fall away and the hostility show its face at Pharyngula.
Greg, isn’t the ‘disorder’ then just the revenge of the powerless?
Ophelia’s too modest to plug it here in Notes and Comments, but she’s live on an atheist Internet radio show right now:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/thinkatheist/2011/07/04/episode-15-ophelia-benson-jul-3-2011
Ironically, the fact that we share this Oppositional Defiant Disorder is one of the chief things I find agreeable about Ophelia. Also, I react to the (vernacularly) passive-aggressive in the same way she does. I want to denude their thinly veiled motives and break up the cheesy fan dance. That’s why I vivisect more aggressively on unctuous religious “liberals” than on the frank, refreshing bigots of the religious right. A smarmy hypocrite who feigns sympathy offends my core values more than an honest enemy.This tendency is at the center of what I call misanthropic humanism, exemplified by “not nice” moralists like Hitchens, Mencken, Twain and Carlin, who love humanity but spend a lot of effort ripping through the professionally virtuous and undeservedly sanctified.
Yes, yes, yes, and me too cubed. I feel just the same way about politics.
The DSM is always a scandal. e.g., homosexuality counted as a disorder, once upon a time. It’s better to see the DSM as a collection of interesting technical opinions than as a definite record of knowledge.
I doubt passive-aggression is really a behavior, or even a personality trait. It’s more like an interpretation of behavior that diagnosticians plaster onto people because they can’t handle the idea that the human population is made up of people with different temperaments, tolerances, and preferences in social life.
e.g., Suppose Sally says something critical of Tony in a low-key way. Tony might think Sally is being passive-aggressive by saying this in the way that she has. Meanwhile, Sally thinks she’s being assertive for saying anything at all, and that Tony’s criticism of her manners is an attempt to silence her. But neither Tony nor Sally are objectively right in their assessments of how Sally spoke, because their interpretation of how Sally says what she does will depend on what they think is appropriate.
Dignity means something like, “People ought to be allowed to define their comfort zones however they like.” And it’s worth noting that if Tony thinks that Sally is worthy of dignity, then Tony won’t bother with pseudo-psychological labels like “passive-aggressive” in the first place. He’ll just say, “You are wrong, and the way you said this was hurtful.” In turn, Sally will return the favor by not telling Tony he’s being strident and violent just because he has a spine and a contrary opinion. She’ll say, “You are wrong, and the way you said this was hurtful.”
But of course, in dramaland, it is taken as given that nobody deserves dignity, and everybody deserves to be treated like dogshit. Ah well. Derpity derp.
Saying “this was hurtful” is passive-aggressive.
:- )
Sorry about the dramaland dogshit, Ben. ODD.
To clarify, my “You mean like” was meant as the start of a (OK, rhetorical) question, but I forgot the punctuation after debating where to put it. I didn’t mean to tell you what you’d meant! Apologies.
I knew that – you were saying “for example?”
Greg Laden @ #6:
I think your former brother-in-law’s behaviour was previously classified as ‘passive resistance’. It is commonly encountered in hierarchical social systems.
His orders were obviously formulated on a need-to-know basis. From your account, the second dial was part of the course plane auto-selector system, and thus part of the operational brief of the ship’s navigator.
A watcher of a boiler dial would have been part of a detail under the ship’s engineer. (In lay terms, the course plane auto-selector system has nothing to do with powering the ship. It switches the course of the ship from the horizontal to the vertical plane: thus the ship’s present position on the bottom of the briny deep.)
Bureaucracy is indeed a wonder to behold.
I hope they all got clear safely before she went down.
EVERYBODY HURTS
…SOMETIMES
</michael stipe>
It’s certainly helpful to have an explicit definition of the (vernacular) term “passive-aggressive”. Particularly so because this definition doesn’t match what I understand by the term.
Specifically, Ophelia’s last usage, “people who praise themselves without admitting that they’re doing it” isn’t to me at all “passive-aggressive”. It’s dishonest, which makes it similar to being passive-aggressive.
But to me, being passive-aggressive is, well, about being aggressive, while taking credit for being passive. Tact and politeness are fundamentally driven by a social expectation that showing something is different than implying it. (A typical example would be to compare the claims “Joe is indisposed.” and “Joe is busy taking a crap.”. Given a little context, they can convey exactly the same fact situation, but one is polite by dint of the fiction that there are other possible meanings.)
Being passive-aggressive (in my understanding of the term) consists of using the social expectations of tact to impose the fiction that one is not being aggressive, while in fact being aggressive. This is fundamentally dishonest because it transfers the social cost of starting aggression to whoever actually tries countering the passive-aggressive behavior.
Hmm… When I use passive-aggressive, what I mean is much closer to the DSM definition then your definition, so it’s interesting to hear that others have different ideas of what it means.
I’ve used it in the the more clinical sense for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never used it to mean a person had a personality disorder; I only use it to describe behavior.
On the other hand, I was a psych major in college, so maybe that has influenced my use of the term? :-)
Yes, trying to. :)
Y pointedly ignores X when X enters the room.
X (who is normally on friendly terms with Y) says: Hey, aren’t you pleased to see me?
Y shrugs theatrically and says: I don’t really have any feelings about it either way.
Y is thinking: You bastard! I am still so angry with you over that little incident last time we went out … and you got drunk and made a fool of yourself! Until you apologise abjectly, I never want to see you or speak to you again. But I’m not going to say anything explicit about it, because that might lead to an argument in which all the cards are on the table. You can work it out for yourself.
^The above behaviour by Y is the sort of thing conveyed to me by the expression “passive-aggressive”.
Until reading this piece, Ophelia, I’d always referred to Nathaniel Branden’s definition:
But I think I’ll be using yours in future. (Unless of course I need to, somewhat passive-aggressively, convey how much some person is torturing me.)
Nice.
Interesting post – I tend to think of ‘passive-aggressive’ in the same way as Russell (#28). In that, I’ve always used the phrase to describe behaviour that avoids direct confrontation but still makes angry feelings known indirectly. Ignoring people for effect is a great example. Another way I’ve thought of it is when people are sweet and lovely most of the time, hiding their resentful, angry feelings and pretending everything’s fine &c, but then when e.g. drunk or pushed by people, lose their temper and get very aggressive (only to apologise swiftly afterwards).
I’ve also heard the phrase used to describe manipulative people who make it clear something is wrong and who imply their friend/significant other is to blame, but won’t tell them what they’ve supposedly done, thus causing much anxiety and stress in the other person.
I think at the root of it is an inability to speak clearly about one’s negative feelings. Fear of confrontation but also a wish to see oneself as a ‘nice person’ which I guess ties into what you’re saying OB. The veneer of ‘I am a nice person’ can mask some very nasty behaviour indeed*. But of course, nice people can speak directly. There is a difference between being direct and being nasty, being assertive and being aggressive.
*Or ‘we are a nice community, let’s everyone be nice (but still all gang up on dissenters)…’
1. There are times when I wish people would stick to using more precise clinical definitions because it ishurtful to people with schizophrenia to see violent behaviour described as “schizo” or “psycho” or to have their condition confused with multiple personality disorder.
2. Having said that, DSM is so full of disorders that you can always find some disorder to apply to people you don’t like, especially among the personality disorders. Just take some unpleasant trait, say narcissism or social dependence, and attach the term “personality disorder” to the end and you have a syndrome. In these circumstances, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to use colloquial meanings without regard to clinical definitions.
3. And having said *that*, I think you’re using the term “passive-aggressive” incorrectly, even in colloquial terms. Being “bossy and censorious while pretending to be gentle and sweet” is not being passive-aggressive. It’s being hypocritical. It’s using double standards. It’s being a tone troll. It’s being a dick. But it’s not passive-aggressive. What passive-aggressive means is someone who manipulates others by being passive, i.e. refusing to undertake reasonable actions and generally creating misery in those about you if asked. If your partner refuses to do any chores around the house, not even a small part of a fair share, and glowers at you every time you mention it until you give up and do all the housework yourself, that’s being passive-aggression. If you’re waiting to be served in a coffee shop and the shop assistant keeps refusing to make eye contact while talking on his mobile to a friend until you decide after a few minutes to go up to the counter and ask what’s taking so long, and he makes some global “I’ll-be-right-there” gesture but turns his back and keeps talking into the phone, that’s passive-aggression. It’s not “I’m a sour bastard pretending to be nice”; it’s “you can’t make me do it, and I’m going to be as unpleasant as I can to discourage further requests.”
4. You don’t have oppositional defiance disorder, Ophelia, unless you oppose religion when the Pope is talking and atheism when Dawkins is talking. You have a healthy disrespect for authority, which is a very different thing.
Warning: multiple failures of grammar in post above. My deepest apologies.
How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?
None. I’ll just sit here in the dark.
I still define passive aggressive as the former flatmate who never seemed to “notice” that a certain topic always led to yelling and ignored attempts to change topic, swearing or even the occassional door being closed in his face and yet still had the gall to attack me for losing my temper. So pretty much spot on Ophelia.
I don’t know Russell, I think I reserve the right to cold shoulder people I find obnoxious or don’t want to spend any time with without being accused of being passive aggressive.
An example rather than a definition:
After a gradual falling out with a former friend, I avoided contact with him. This compromised our social circle, which made it more difficult in practical terms for my wife to see some of her friends. So I swallowed my pride, went along to events where we’d have to interact and tried to play nice. I really did.
I’m aware that I’m being hypocritical.
He, however, is being passive aggressive. At the first event we attended together after the falling out, he made a big show of repeatedly calling me ‘esteemed guest’ (we weren’t even at his house!) and insisted that I be served first with food (after the children). It was embarrassing and obviously intended to be so. He was singling me out for special treatment wherever he could, all under the guise of ‘welcoming me back into the fold’ as though he’s somehow the keystone that holds the group together and the gatekeeper who decides who’s allowed in.
This is water off a duck’s back to me, but an interesting example of passive aggressive behaviour as I tend to use the term. He’s manipulating the situation in an attempt to make me feel bad while trying to come off as more-magnanimous-than-thou. Fortunately, my friends aren’t idiots and can see right through him.
No doubt he’ll push me too far at some point and reveal his aggression to everyone else. Or he’ll give it up and fall into the same hypocritical dance I have.
Oh, yeah. In Minnesota it’s an art form.
I completely agree with “being aggressive while trying to hang onto the credit for being non-aggressive.” I’m not seeing a huge difference between that and “disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.”
@Greg:
I don’tthink your nephew was acting in a passive aggressive manner at all. The reality of being at the bottom of the military pevcking order is that not only are you not expected to think, you will get in trouble for doing so if you happen to think wrong. The only way to survive is to obey orders exactly. In case of conflicting orders you obey the last one given to you.
I wonder when James is going to get back to you with those “examples of people being labelled passive-aggressive for being kind or respectful”…
That Guy Montag, #34: I get Russell’s example. There’s a difference between choosing not to speak to / spend time with someone you happen not to like, and using ignoring deliberately as a weapon. I think Russell (correct me if I’m wrong) was talking about people who ordinarily would be friends (or more), where one is angry with the other but refuses to talk about it. I think the difference is that in Russell’s example Y really wants X to feel bad and care about why Y is ignoring him/her, whereas you presumably are not spending much thought on these people you find obnoxious.
SC – hmph – I guess that will be never.
I think limping through life, failing to assume responsibilities, spacing out and screwing up and letting others pick up the mess, then apologizing pathetically, repeatedly and bemoaning what a lousy person you feel yourself to be, but continuing in the same way and somehow always getting what you want after all, is the most common form of (vernacular) passive-aggressive behavior. I see it all the time in the workplace. It is bullying and hijacking others through feigned weakness and humility. Very clever tactic, and the life’s work of many.
Any personality trait can become the basis of a disorder if it’s pushed to the point where it seriously hampers a person’s everyday life, relationships, etc. For instance, some people have a pessimistic outlook in life but do just fine most of the time; other people are clinically depressed.
Thank you – that’s a helpful clarification and it significantly alters my reading of your previous post. Just out of interest, can you find any dictionary that takes the same reading as you do? I’m intrigued to find out where this vernacular meaning came about, because before I started seeing the term used by PZ and you I had never heard it used in such a way.
I think I already did that – see #109.
James, no, you didn’t do it at all – see 118. In 109 you completely ignored my point (it’s not being nice, it’s telling others to be nice) and just repeated what you’d been saying all along, as if I’d never made such a point.
No, of course I can’t find such a dictionary, and I’m not going to bother trying, because I didn’t get it out of a dictionary in the first place. We don’t get most of our vocabulary out of dictionaries, you know – we get it out of interaction and context and the like. That’s what I meant by “vernacular” – I’ve been using “passive-aggressive” the way I think (perhaps incorrectly) it’s generally used In The Culture.
I’m not sure where and how it came about. I mentioned Woody Allen – I think it’s that kind of thing – you know, chattering classes, pop psychology, semi-technical terms that get picked up and probably misused. I think of it as slightly outdated, like “anal compulsive” – as having been hip in the 50s, perhaps.
And also as unduly neglected. I find it useful! It does describe something I’ve encountered quite often, here and there. It pinpoints something I find peculiarly irritating. (I think one reason for that may be that women are expected to be passive-aggressive, and I dislike those expectations. That’s a complicated subject.)
I understand you find the term useful! I wasn’t seeking to question that.
Ophelia’s understanding of the vernacular matches mine. And, contrary to his protests, it also matches Dan’s. It’s not really a semantic issue, or at least it shouldn’t be.
The real issue is that Ophelia, for whatever reason, thinks that the maxim, “don’t name names” is passive-aggressive. For the mostpart, my reading is the same as James’s. Seems to me that Phil Plait was unclear and therefore annoying, but he was not passive-aggressive.
We could sit around disputing how we ought to interpret this situation. I think that, if we did, I think eventually it would come down to our different norms of propriety. But norms of propriety have little to do with whether or not Phil Plait was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and more to do with whether or not he has lived up to his responsibilities as a speaker.
Ben, hmmmmno, I’m not sure I really do think that, at least not when pressed. One thing has led to another in such a way that I ended up saying that, but I don’t really think it’s a general rule. In other words I take it back.
Nothing particular to say except echoing Emily up there- I just loved this post. Loved it.
Actually, a bit OTT here, but just this weekend we were talking with a friend, a single mom with two kids, about how commonly we find mothers and teachers using passive-aggresive tones and words to control the children. I mean, actually screaming at your child and being seen as loudly angry is frowned upon, so instead mothers and teachers resort to this ghastly artificial speech pattern: now Timothy, we do not hit each other with a stick, please put that down and thank you (Timothy continues poking out somebody’s eye with a stick) Timothy, you are not listening to me so I am asking you to do a time out, 5 minutes Timothy…
Sometimes feels much more refreshing just to scream at Timothy and grab the stick from him.
Ah, fair nuff.
Without screaming how will Timothy know what the boundaries are?!
:- )
(Seriously though, I remember that tone from a kids’ tv show in my early childhood 150 years ago. I always thought – I’m a child, not an idiot. There’s a difference. Talk normal.)
I hear it used (I’m a trade union rep) in a workplace context, where it refers to a kind of passive resistance to doing work or following instructions, without actually publicly challenging those instructions or complaining about the work. Wikipedia has the phrase “disavowed resistance”, which I think captures some of what is meant quite nicely.
It’s hard to see this as a “condition”, unless you think that the workplace must necessarily be a happy place of fun and loveliness where power is shared equally and challenging management is welcome and encouraged and nobody experiences stress or bullying. Is “not liking work much” and hating your boss a psychological dysfunction?
Dan, that’s a pitch-perfect illustration of how absurd the nosology presented in the DSM can be when applied logically.
Don’t be so psychologically dysfunctional, worker! OBEY!
The example of “true” passive-aggressiveness that my abnormal psychology professor gave is this:
The man selling the tickets at a train station can see from his booth another man hurrying towards the station, attempting to make it onto the train that is currently pulling into the platform. The hurried man runs up to the ticket booth; he still needs to buy his ticket. Even though there is no time to lose, the ticket vendor doesn’t move as quickly as he could. He doesn’t, however, move “slowly.” Rather, he moves just slowly enough that the other man cannot get his ticket and make it to the train in time.
That is passive-aggressive. The hallmark of it is that the aggression is completely disguised – the ticket vendor moves slower than he could have, but not so slow that one would suspect him of malice. The man buying the ticket was probably upset, but probably also thought that the ticket vendor simply couldn’t have completed the transaction any more quickly.
My professor also pointed out that people who are passive-aggressive don’t necessarily know it. They don’t know that they are systematically behaving in such a way as to harm others (which makes it all the more difficult to confront them about it, if they themselves don’t even realize they’re doing it). In this way, psychological disorders often hide themselves from the very people who exhibit them.
So, James…those examples of “people being labelled passive-aggressive for being kind or respectful”? Where are they?
Pony up.
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