It’s a term I hear bandied about a lot here, and I’ve never been exactly clear as to its meaning - I know it’s a psychological term used to describe a set of behaviours, but is it a clinical description or just pop-psych? It seems to be used to describe someone who deliberately annoys people by being a doormat, but further clarification would be helpful.
How great would it be if no one answered his question directly?
Hey, Case Sensitive, You ever read a column called “The Straight Dope” by some guy called Cecil Adams? He answers questions just like this.
Whatever.
It can also be a poker term:
Weak-Tight = A player who only sometimes plays hands, and rarely raises
Aggressive-Tight = A player who only sometimes plays hands, but is always raising his best hands to make the most money.
Aggressive - Loose = A player who plays a lot of hands, and is always raising.
Weak - Loose = Plays a lot of hands, but rarely raises and sticks around a lot to see the next card.
Nothing to do with what your saying, but just a thought 
If someone asks you to do something, and you know it would irk them if it didn’t get done, and you avoid doing it for the purpose of pissing them off, THAT is passive-aggressive behavior.
It’s someone who doesn’t like direct confrontation, who will go behind your back and say or do nasty things if they’re mad at you, instead of sitting down and talking it out with you. A perfect example is my old roommate’s asshole boyfriend, who, when he was mad at his roommates and had a cold at the time, licked every piece of silverware in the house to make them sick, rather than hashing it out with them. Jackass.
Another facet of PA behavior is enless procrastination, and agreeing to do things but never doing them. This might be more noticeable in a workplace setting than elsewhere.
Oh, don’t put yourself to a lot of trouble answering the question. I’ll just sit here with nothing to do. It’s OK. Really.
I’ve heard procrastination described as a “passive-aggressive” behavior, but I’m not sure I buy it. I see the “passive,” but I don’t see the “aggressive.” Unless you are purposely doing it to annoy someone, I see procrastination as simply delaying an unpleasant or difficult chore, a behavior which may have absolutely nothing to do with the person who assigned that chore.
I think this misses the mark somewhat, since the activity behind the person’s back is an aggressive behavior. The OP actually hit it on the head: annoying someone by being a deliberate doormat, or attacking them by not following through. Example: I’m your supervisor. It’s critical for you to get an estimate for a job so we can get the proposal done on time. My boss is holding me personally accountable for the package. You know this. In order to cause problems with my credibility with my boss, you drag your feet on getting the estimate. This is the sort of behavior you can see every week on “The Apprentice”.
Actually you’re confusing weak with passive. It’s Passive-Tight and Passive-Loose. Weak is a term related to skill rather than willingness to raise.
Passive-aggressive behavior is, not always, but often an act of omission rather than commission. It’s aggressive in that it’s hostile but it’s passive in that it’s not overt. It’s particularly annoying because it’s difficult to call them out on it. If you ask someone to do something and they say “Fuck you,” that’s aggressive and can’t be denied as such. If someone says “No problem” but then doesn’t do it specifically to hurt/annoy you, they are being hostile but covert.
Well, yes. It’s not just the action but the motivation that qualifies the behavior as ‘passive-aggressive’. Which can make it hard to justify by the evidence, of course … Person A never does anything for anyone-he’s not passive-aggressive, he’s just lazy. But person B gets other people’s requests taken care of quickly and efficiently, but the things you ask him to do take weeks if they get done at all. Person B doesn’t like you, and is expressing it passive-aggressively. Then again, come to think of it, person A may be being passive-agressive, too, and just hates everyone …
One example I learned in an abnormal psych course of PA behavior was when an offender avoids criticism or confrontation by outwardly flagellating themselves.
For instance, you beat up your girlfriend or wife in a fit of anger. When her angry brother confronts you about it, not only do you own up to the act, but you start slamming your head against the wall and calling yourself every bad name in the book. The brother’s justified anger is then replaced with guilt and pity, and he leaves you alone. As a result, you escape the deserved ass-kicking and go on to commit more sins. I don’t really understand how this is PA behavior, though.
Another example (which I believe is more “classic”)
All of your friends want to go to a bar. You would rather stay home and watch TV, but your friends beg you to join them until you say yes. But you still don’t want to go. So you “accidently” leave your wallet at home, forcing everyone to pay for your drinks.
It would only be PA if the procastinator is putting off doing an assignment that they don’t want to do or if their boss is someone they don’t like. It wouldn’t be PA if I’m just lazy and don’t want to write the report.
But it would be PA if my boss is a prick and I know that turning the report in on time will make him look good.
Basically, being passive-aggressive is expressing your hostility, anger, disappointment, lack of interest, etc. by not expressing it, but doing so in a way that makes it clear you aren’t happy. It can take a lot of different forms–procrastination and guilt trips leap immediately to mind–which can make it kind of hard to explain to people.
My old roommate tends toward being passive-aggressive in a variety of ways. She’s the sort of person who never makes a suggestion about where to have dinner. She’s open to anything, really. So you start making suggestions, and she starts shooting them down until you finally hit on whereever it was she wanted to go in the first place. She would never tell her old boyfriend, “Well, actually, I’d really prefer it if you stayed here and did something with me instead of getting drunk with the guys.” No, she’d climb into her most pititful-looking lounging clothes (sweatpants and a huge t-shirt full of holes), take off her makeup, and curl up in a little ball, saying, “Have a good time. I’ll just watch warm up some leftovers and watch movies by myself. ::SIGH::” (Or as Dr.J always paraphrased it, you go have fun and I’ll just sit here and rot.) She won’t say that she doesn’t want to see a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She’s got to go on about how tired her fiance is and how he’s got an early day tomorrow, while her fiance is doing the Time Warp behind her.
Thanks for the clarification.
Wouldn’t you like to know?
My friend’s roomate is extremely passive-agressive. Along with others have said, this roomate
1.)-Will come down on herself harder than a person who initially critisized her for something, and establish herself as being inept and stupid every time it gets brought up, thereby avoiding actually having to do anything about the problem since the whistleblower will usually feel guilty/awkward and back off.
2.)-Jump back and forth between “I never get do do what I want to do”/“Go ahead and do what you want to do” Making it impossible for everyone else to enjoy themselves because they either feel upset at having to revolve their evening around her or guilty that she’s getting shut out. It is lose-lose for everybody but her, because ultimately she’s being the center of attention no matter what we decide to do.
3.)-Annoys roomate to the point of him snapping at her, then she gets all upset and weepy and apologizing to the point of having the word ‘sorry’ lose absolutely all meaning. Then, when roomate refuses to forgive her (because she’s being annoying) she gets mad at him and suddenly takes the moral high ground by claiming that “Since I had the guts to apologize for what I did, you should have the guts to forgive me for what I did”.
#1 and #3 are behaviors this roomate uses to essentially get away with whatever she wants. It is a get-out-of-jail-free card for her with my roomate, by annoying him to the point of having him regret making a big deal about something she did. By watching what she does to her roomate (my friend), I can be aware of the signs of when somebody is being passive-agressive. Incedentally, this doesn’t really work well against me, since I don’t play her game, but she knows this as well so when she is pissed at me it is simpler for her to just constantly scream at me to get out of her apartment (I don’t live there) than to actually argue with me 