Are Mormons Passive Aggressive?

I am going to write something that will probably go against the grain, and may even produce conflict.  Why? Because I think there are lots of problems with the interpretation of MIchael J. Steven’s data showing Latter-day Saints in Weber county have a high preference for passive aggressive strategies of resolving potential conflict.

Stevens’ data are fascinating, if not surprising for anyone who has been observing Utah culture and, especially, LDS ways for a long time. Indeed, they correlate with work being d
one by my colleagues  at Utah Valley University, Kris Doty and Cameron Johns, on depression and Latter-day Saints.  

I have no problem with the basic data. It is the labels and their implications that trouble me. 

Stevens use of the term passive aggression is first on my list.  

While the term may be standard in his world of Organization Behavior, it is grounded in problematic assumptions of human nature that assume a normative, rational individual. Experimental studies, and a wealth of other work, show that such a creature is not a human universal but a product of a particular society with it own norms and moralities.

If you wish to look at that literature, let me refer you to the work of economic anthropologist Jean Ensminger and her colleagues, the work (and critical discussion) of the work of Joseph Heinrich et al, The seminal researchin a very different theoretical vein of Marilyn Strathern, and so on. 

The data and the conceptual arguments warning against over normalizing the “rational individual” as the modal human form are strong and convincing. 

Nevertheless, such as the thickets of academe that the word has not gotten yet to large areas of academic production that continue in habitual styles. 

Stevens hews closely to this habitual mode.  He sees what he calls passive aggression as a negative and as unhealthy, a pathology, (of course the very notion of healthy is also premised on the same idea of the rational individual). 

He writes. “A passive-aggressive person will generally deploy such behavioral tactics as: keeping one’s distance and remaining silent or aloof; hiding one’s true thoughts, feelings, or emotions . . .”

Note how Stevens deftly removes the issue form what is data show, i.e. a strong 

correlation with LDS Utahns, to individual it into a personal characteristic. This suggests Stevens focus is on the individual person, not the person as a member of a group that has its own reality and value, even if he goes on to look at and dismiss arguments that might explain the groupiness of his data. 

The next key, though lies in Stevens emphasis on the assumed depth of the person as needing to be manifest in integrity to others, the  “true thoughts, feelings, and emotions.” This is a problematic assumption for many reasons, which space does not allow me to go into here. If nothing else, it requires the creation inside one of some notion of “true” self which can then be portrayed to the outside. 

You do not have to go far to see how the work of Judith Butler, Marilyn Strathern and many others emphasizes the cultural and economic specificity of such notions.  Ironically, Stevens himself notes this when he writes “Passive-aggression is the least common response option to conflict among the U.S. population at large and is typically viewed as an inadequate and unconstructive strategy (at least over the long term).”

Hi work suggests that Utah Mormons are a cohesive minority who are demonstrably different from the American mainstream. 

But is this bad? 

Stevens thinks so.  He writes:  One is passive in that one is unassertive in pursuing a resolution that addresses one’s own interests and concerns, while simultaneously being aggressive—or better stated, while simultaneously being uninterested in, dismissive, or contemptuous of the needs or concerns of the other. . . .”

Yet the needs and concerns of the other depend as well on them being normative individuals, instead of persons of the Mormons sort.  

In Stevens work we see an aggression of a normative American culture on a minority with its own history and its own personality formations. 

Indeed, one can develop a justification of the Mormon being, without speaking of passive aggression.  We could borrow a term from Strathern and others who work in Oceania and South Asia, to speak instead of a relational self or person. 

For this person, relationships with others are primary, not the development of some core inside them that can be labeled the true self.  One can see the ethos and values of such persons in many works, including that of Uni Wikan.

There is one factor that must be added here.  The nature of the Mormon being is understood to be connected to others through the light of Christ, as well as the Holy Ghost. Relations are important, but far more important is following the guidance of that presence that Latter-day Saints learn to feel and to enjoy.

My issues are not, per se with Stevens, although I am troubled with his use of his own very valuable data.  They are instead with a steam-roller culture that, through power and ostensibly scientific ideas, attempts to flatten the world into a monoculture and a kind of universal individual. 

You can see some of the effects of this single, one-size-fits-all culture in Tanya Luhrman’s piece in todays’ New York Times, where she notes the probable massive increase in depression around the world.

If you take away the normative arguments in Stevens to the normative individual, there simply remains little wrong with Mormon passive aggressiveness. The problems lie in dominant American culture and its lackeys. Long live the Mormon way of being and living.