Covert Signaling
One-liner: Contempt delivered through eye-rolls, sighs, and smirks, deniable, repeated, and status-lowering.
Also known as / related terms: Nonverbal incivility, subtle/covert bullying, contempt signaling, passive-aggressive nonverbal behavior.
What it is: Workplace bullying research distinguishes overt aggression (yelling, explicit threats) from covert forms that operate through nonverbal channels, eye-rolling, sighing, sneering, hostile looks, and pointed side-comments timed to a target’s contributions. Because workplace bullies often “operate within the established rules” of the organization, these signals are engineered to be deniable in the moment (“I was just stretching”) while still landing socially. Separately, Dr. John Gottman’s four-decades-long relationship research identified contempt, including eye-rolling and sneering, as the single strongest behavioral predictor of relational breakdown, defining it as “any statement or nonverbal behavior that puts yourself on higher ground” than the other person. Applied to a workplace context, repeated covert signaling around one person functions as a public, low-cost way to communicate “this person’s input doesn’t merit real attention” without ever saying so.
What it looks like (workplace): Every time one team member speaks in a meeting, a colleague across the table exhales visibly, glances at another attendee, and gives a small eye-roll, never commenting on the content. Over weeks, other attendees start mirroring the reaction without knowing why; the target notices people hesitating to engage with their ideas, but there’s no single remark to point to.
Why they do it: It lowers a target’s perceived credibility in front of an audience while leaving no verbal record, it recruits bystanders’ perception (“something’s off about them”) without the signaler ever making a falsifiable claim.
How to protect yourself:
- Name it in the room, once, matter-of-fact and without accusation: “I noticed a reaction, did you want to add something?” This forces the signal into words or extinguishes it.
- Don’t mirror the emotional temperature; steady tone and pace deny the signal its intended contrast (“calm competent person” vs. “reactive target”).
- Log timing and pattern privately (date, meeting, what you’d just said), a single sigh is nothing; a sigh every time you speak for three months is a pattern worth having in writing.
- Build allies who witness the same pattern, corroboration is what turns “I felt dismissed” into a describable, credible account.
Cross-links: Backhanded Framing / Micropositioning; Emotional Trap Setting; Triangulation.
Sources:
- Frontiers/PMC: “What’s in an eye roll? …workplace incivility in healthcare”, peer-reviewed discussion of eye-rolling and nonverbal incivility as documented workplace behavior.
- The Gottman Institute: “What is Contempt?”, defines contempt (incl. eye-rolling, sneering) as status-signaling nonverbal behavior, from the Gottman research program.
- Making Business Matter: “Covert Bullying: How to Spot and Stop Hidden Abuse”, practitioner-level synthesis of covert/nonverbal bullying tactics.
Label note: Established research concept, assembled here under a descriptive name. The underlying phenomena (nonverbal incivility, contempt signaling) are separately documented in workplace-bullying literature and in Gottman’s relational research; “Covert Signaling” is this guide’s umbrella term for applying that research to workplace status games.