The default, the most used conversational style may be of one of these four types.  But I think a lot of us use other styles when the occasion calls for it.  At least, I have noticed that in myself. 

I grew up with someone who was passive-aggressive.  As a young person, I was usually passive, but could be easily pushed to aggressive.  As an adult, I strive for assertive.  I sometimes think the person who coined the term "assertive" knew my mother-in-law.  Her conversational style was so different from my own mother.  And so I try to model my conversational style on my mother-in-law rather than my mother.  Life has been much easier since I have known her.

I still don't respond well to passive-aggressive people.  I still either give up and go away or lose my temper.  And losing my temper is so - tiring and counterproductive.

 

 I think you might need to add a fifth category passive-assertive. I tend to be passive in many areas, although it has nothing to do with a lack of confidence or self worth, it is simply because I don't care. Passiveness is pretty much my default with anyone I don't have a reason to believe I will be seeing again or people I see rarely (for example, extended family) and any kind of personality clash/drama is undesirable. The great part of being passive is that it is very difficult for anyone to pick a fight with you, making it a great way to deal with belligerents looking to create drama for the holiday. 

My natural style when interacting with anyone I care about or have to interact with often is to be assertive.

cj wrote:

The default, the most used conversational style may be of one of these four types.  But I think a lot of us use other styles when the occasion calls for it.  At least, I have noticed that in myself. 

I grew up with someone who was passive-aggressive.  As a young person, I was usually passive, but could be easily pushed to aggressive.  As an adult, I strive for assertive.  I sometimes think the person who coined the term "assertive" knew my mother-in-law.  Her conversational style was so different from my own mother.  And so I try to model my conversational style on my mother-in-law rather than my mother.  Life has been much easier since I have known her.

I still don't respond well to passive-aggressive people.  I still either give up and go away or lose my temper.  And losing my temper is so - tiring and counterproductive.

Hi cj – I’m aware the post was too long but couldn’t really sum it up but thanks for replying. 

I grew up with someone passive-aggressive too – and just like you say I was passive most of the time and then aggression would burst out. There was a lot of aggression coming out in the family anyway with people shouting their emotions instead of speaking to each other.  It was also a rule that we had to be upbeat all the time so you couldn’t talk about sadness or anger etc. either.  As there wasn’t a way to talk about emotions there was a lot of drama going on and no way to articulate. I realise now its called dysfunction!

Lucky you have an assertive mother-in-law, I know what you mean, it was strange for me to meet an assertive woman for the first time when I met my aunt who was a nurse I couldn’t quite ‘get’ her but pretty soon realised it was a better way to go.  Then buying a few books on the subject helped - I find that people often interpret assertion for aggression when there’s a big difference. I've found one way round that in a conflict is to use sentences starting with ‘I think or feel’ rather than ‘you think or feel’ and the broken record technique.

Like you I find passive-aggressives difficult because they won’t let you know where they stand and they tend to get very hurt and angry if you challenge them about their manipulations to bring things into the open and then you’re pushed into the bad guy position if not careful!  The most difficult place to encounter them is in a work situation because they fire shots at you disguised with a smile when they're really being mean.

ProzacDeathWish wrote:

  When ever possible I actively avoid all human contact.

 

I understand that, really, I do.  Anymore, I often do not want to talk to friends and I really don't want to visit.  I might be fortunate in that my friends ignore my unspoken wishes and come to visit or invite me to dinner anyway.  And they aren't turned off by my attitude of - gee, you're here, so I guess I will be polite.  And no, I can not bring myself to tell them go away once they show up.  They usually do call and ask before showing up -- and I have been known to assertively say, not today.  And that is fine.

 

It seems to me there are four main conversation styles when it comes to dealing with others, particularly conflict resolution but does it really matter which style we adopt?  I prefer to aim towards assertive behavior myself but what do you think?

Here’s a summary of the different types:-

Passive Behavior- If something happens in your life and you’re too afraid to say to that other person what you think, this is passive behavior.  That’s an implicit way of saying you are less than the other person and the other person will realize it too.  If you go along with this you’ll have less self confidence because you’ll feel bad about yourself.

So often a passive person doesn’t really feel they have the right to speak up as another person violates more and more of their rights.  They value the other person over themselves and in effect become a doormat.  A passive person feels others always win and they lose and this type of behavior often leads to panic attacks or resentment.  The message they are giving out is ‘I don’t matter’.

Aggressive Behavior– This is the type of person who has to win and prefer you to lose and they often have an exaggerated sense of their own entitlement.  They’re easily spotted when they write and speak because their sentences usually start with the word ‘you’ when they deal with others.  The reason being they don’t ‘own’ their own feelings/actions and don’t usually feel accountable but tend to blame other people.  This is the way they try to stay in control of their own lives, it was the other person’s fault anyway so let them deal with the consequences.

The aggressive person seems to have lots of self confidence but underneath their brash exterior hides strong feelings of powerlessness.  To bolster themselves up they swear and swagger through the conversation but underneath they know they are really as powerless and helpless as the passive person because when other people finally get sick of their behavior and stand up to them, their life spins out of control. None of us have the right to violate boundaries of others (what we’ll put up with). This is the type likely to be very harmful to others because their motto is ‘You don’t matter’.

Passive-Aggressive Behavior – Here we have the typical martyr-type complex.  This is the type of person who’s always complaining about others behind their backs rather than speaking their minds.  They are the classic sniper.  They’re not sure enough of where they stand in relation to other people so they tend to control by subtle manipulation. They often function as victims through learned helplessness. 

Because they don’t know themselves, their boundaries are always changing and so know one else knows where they stand either.  This is the type who will deal with the consequences of their actions but will make others pay for it. For the passive-aggressive type it feels like no-one wins and while they may be a doormat they just can’t stop complaining about it. Their motto is ‘I don’t know what matters’.

Assertive Behavior – The key to being assertive is to let others know how we think and feel without harming anyone and therefore there’s nothing vague about us.  If you’re assertive you teach others how to deal with you and that’s very important.  Other people know where they stand.  We look for win/win situations, where possible in all our dealings with others.  That’s it in a nutshell.

An assertive person doesn’t feel the need to control others, only themselves, so they’re mature enough to take responsibility for their own behavior and you won’t find them playing the ‘blame game’.  When in conflict with others they’ll respect the boundaries of others but only because they have strong boundaries themselves and can express them clearly.
Being assertive means we are aware of our own strengths and weakness and are prepared to be honest about them, there isn’t any need to conceal or manipulate because we feel in control of our own lives. When you first start being assertive some people may seem surprised and you may lose those that didn’t really like you.  If you’re assertive you’re part of the group but you don’t care so much what others think of you.

Peggotty wrote:

 I can recommend a good book on the subject of passive-aggressives called ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People’ by Dr. George Simon.   He points out how to spot, understand and deal with abusive types like these that are so hard to pin down.

I'll have to see if my library has it. Thanks.

I've displayed all 4 of those at various times. Depends on my mood, the argument in question, the audience, and the venue.