Passive-aggressive behavior

Uncommon card · No. 85968

Passive-aggressive behavior is a communication that in the mind of the speaker is based on a strong negative emotion such as anger but is expressed using words that do not convey the emotion, including completely avoiding direct communication when it is socially customary. Such behavior can be effective to avoid confrontation, rejection, and criticism but can be confusing, annoying, and exasperating to a recipient of the communication due to the discordance between what they hear and what they perceive. Passive-aggressive behavior was first defined clinically by Colonel William C. Menninger during World War II in the context of soldiers' reactions to military compliance. Menninger described soldiers who were not openly defiant but expressed their civil disobedience (what he called "aggressiveness") by "passive measures, such as pouting, stubbornness, procrastination, inefficiency, and passive obstructionism" due to what Menninger saw as an "immaturity" and a reaction to routine military...

Read on Wikipedia