“Ignore them and they’ll just go away”, in both one of the best and worst pieces of advice I was given as a bullied kid. It was the best, in that nobody had any better advice or ideas, and the worst because it was completely ineffective. In dealing with conflict, taking the moral high ground, not acknowledging the threat and walking away is rarely an effective route to take. It is basically a form of denial to yourself, and a provocative response to somebody else’s anger and emotion. Sure, it looks good on paper, but disengagement of this nature, involving someone who wants to engage, escalates rather than deescalates the situation. A bully, or angry person requires a response and a recognition of their emotional state, and if you don’t give it e.g. you simply walk away, they are likely to become more aggressive and angry rather than less.
When a person becomes angry and aggressive, they feel justified to adopt this emotional state. It may be that something you have done has caused them to become angry, or in the case of the bully something you haven’t done, such as failing to acknowledge in some way the top dog position they feel they somehow deserve (bullies don’t suffer from low self-esteem, quite the opposite, but they are insecure and are frightened by those they see as questioning or challenging them – and failure to acknowledge them as the Alphas they believe they are will cause them to attack). Not only do such people feel justified in their anger, they invest in it, and they want some form of acknowledgment and return on it. Ignoring them, simply doesn’t work because of this.
There are two clips, which have been circulating around the internet recently, which clearly demonstrate this. The most recent is of a woman on Boylston Street in Boston, who films herself challenging a man who she believes has been filming her and other women without their knowledge/consent. For several minutes she follows him, demanding that he deletes the film of her, and challenging him to explain why he was taking footage and photographs of women etc. The man’s response is to walk away and ignore her; not acknowledging her presence or what she is saying. As the clock ticks on, she becomes more and more emotional, and more and more invested in her emotional state – her behavior and actions could even be viewed as constituting a case of harassment i.e. she may have been breaking the law herself. Whilst her original goal, may have been to get him to delete the film he took of her, this begins to get lost as she becomes more and more angry/emotional, and by the end of the encounter she is simply caught up in the complete “wrong” and injustice of the situation as she sees it e.g. he should receive some form of punishment, there should be some type of retribution, people shouldn’t be able to do things like this etc. Anger may start out being directed at one specific thing, but as it grows and gains it loses that specificity – especially if the original complaint/injustice is not quickly addressed. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with everything this woman was saying, however the footage demonstrates really well, how trying to ignore an emotional person only increases their anger etc.
The second clip is less recent, but involves an entitled college student, who turns up drunk at a university cafeteria, demanding to be served macaroni and cheese. The manager refuses him entry, confronts him and then tries to walk away and ignore him. By the time he tries to disengage and walk away, the drunk college student has invested too much into his emotional state, and is unable to walk away. A situation that should have been ended in the first few minutes, starts to stretch on, with the student becoming more and more emotional, and more and more frustrated at the manager’s lack of acknowledgement at his perceived injustice. It eventually ends with him physically assaulting the manager. Ignoring him, and hoping he’d go away, was not a productive or successful strategy. Believing that angry and aggressive people will simply give up, is an extremely dangerous path to go down. Sometimes a person’s anger may be understandable – as in the case of the woman who believed she was being filmed – and other times it can be clearly out of line, such as in the case of the drunk college student, however both individuals, whether rightly or wrongly, feel justified to act and behave in an aggressive manner, and over the course of the conflict have invested in their emotional state to such a degree, that they don’t know what will satisfy themselves. The specifics of the original dispute have become lost in the confrontation.
This is why it is important to try and end conflicts and disputes quickly, whilst there is still a specific issue that can be addressed. By trying to ignore this and walk away, with the hope that the person will give up, is more likely to increase their anger and emotional state than not. Angry people want recognition, and not giving it to them is dangerous. Recognition does not mean that they are “right” or that you “agree” with them, but rather that you are acknowledging their real or perceived injustice; ignoring them does not mean that they will go away.