Passive–aggressive behavior

Passive–aggressive behavior
Passive–aggressive personality disorder
Classification and external resources
ICD-10 F60.8
ICD-9 301.84

Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed, resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.

It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.[1]

Contents

Signs and symptoms

The book Living with the Passive–Aggressive Man lists 11 responses that may help identify passive–aggressive behavior:[1]

  • Ambiguity or speaking cryptically: a means of creating a feeling of insecurity in others or of disguising one's own insecurities.
  • Chronically being late and forgetting things: another way to exert control or to punish.
  • Fear of competition
  • Fear of dependency
  • Fear of intimacy as a means to act out anger: The passive–aggressive often cannot trust. Because of this, they guard themselves against becoming intimately attached to someone.
  • Making chaotic situations
  • Making excuses for non-performance in work teams
  • Obstructionism
  • Procrastination
  • Sulking
  • Victimization response: instead of recognizing one's own weaknesses, tendency to blame others for own failures.

A passive–aggressive person may not display all of these behaviors, and may have other[clarification needed] non-passive–aggressive traits.

Diagnostic criteria (DSM-IV Appendix B) and personality disorder