When Agreement is Not Consent

Appeasement is the trauma response no one is talking about. | By

A familiar story of Black people and police officers. On April 30, 2018, in a Southern California suburb, a White woman watched as three Black women, packing suitcases into the trunk of their car, left her neighbor’s home. She didn’t recognize them and when she waved, they didn’t wave back. So she called 911. The Black women were simply leaving an Airbnb rental and quickly found themselves surrounded by seven police cars with a helicopter circling above because, in the words of the Airbnb homeowner, of “their rudeness and lack of good nature” to the neighbor’s wave. Unlike many recent incidents of Black people encountering police officers, no one was injured or killed here, but it was recorded.

Watching the videos on social media, we see the women laughing, joking, and expressing mild exasperation. The police officers insisted that the incident was indeed friendly, with the police chief stating that body cameras show police “handled the situation with professionalism, dignity, and respect.” In telling the story afterward, however, the women’s words belie the levity in the images. “The trauma is real. I’ve been angry, frustrated, and sad,” said filmmaker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall.

So, what is going on here? How can people experience the same event — with all the laughing and joking — and yet have such different experiences? One frequently overlooked answer is appeasement. The Black women were appeasing the White officers. And the reason the police were called in the first place was because the Black women had originally failed to appease the White neighbor with the socially requisite deference to Whiteness. To be Black in the United States is to face a racial hierarchy that is very dangerous to challenge, especially when that hierarchy takes the form of an armed police officer. Impulses to overtly defend oneself by fleeing or fighting are suppressed and hidden behind socially acceptable behaviors that defuse the danger, making the appeaser smaller, weaker, and less threatening. These women laughed and joked their way out of danger while their internal traumatic experience was invisible to the officers they appeased.

What do we mean by appeasement, exactly? Simply put, appeasement is any relational behavior designed to pacify interpersonal threat. Although it exists on a larger continuum of strategies that help us get along with others, these behaviors vary according to the amount of perceived power held by the parties involved. For example, when the power imbalance between people is relatively small, both parties might usefully and comfortably employ negotiation to come to a satisfactory resolution to a disagreement. When we have less power than the other person, we might feel forced to engage in some kind of compromise in the face of competing demands — not a win-win, but the next best thing given the circumstances. Only when the power differences are experienced as significant does appeasement come into play. Appeasement asks for nothing from the person holding power except that they do not harm us. When we have no hope of winning or getting what we want, appeasement is designed to at least let us live to fight another day.

Where does appeasement originate? Appeasement is more than a culturally conditioned response to social hierarchy; its roots stretch deep into our shared biology with other animals, especially mammals. Fight-and-flight defense responses are protective against predators, but they are less useful when the aggressor is a member of your own species or especially when exile or escape from the group can be perilous. Dogs, non-human primates, and even bears have all been studied and shown to display appeasement behavior. It’s common to witness two dogs sizing each other up until one drops to the ground showing its belly in submission to avert a fight. Subordinate chimpanzees not only reduce their size to appear less threatening to dominant apes but have been witnessed seeking comfort from their aggressors to avoid provoking further violence. Field observations of bears show a repertoire of appeasement behaviors to prevent and de-escalate conflict, some of which are so taxing that appeasing bears need extensive rest periods to recover. Although there is little research on the physiological mechanisms involved in appeasement, there is likely a substantial activation of the fight/flight stress systems. However, this system is not externally expressed — in essence, put on hold by a freeze response — as if hitting the gas and brakes at the same time. The metabolic cost of high dual stress system activation may explain bear and other appeasing animals’ exhaustion and need for active stress-reducing behaviors.

According to researchers, the social basis for appeasement in humans is not unlike that of our animal kin — the bears, dogs, and chimpanzees. While there is no straight line between animal and human biology, the automatic nature and widespread prevalence of appeasement among social animals hints that underneath social conditioning lies a biological stress response with a potentially heavy energetic cost. The study of animals makes it possible to consider appeasement as a natural part of our human response repertoire, especially when confronted with social situations in which none of the other stress response options are seen as viable.

In other words, we appease when the nature of the relationship makes escape impossible, defensive attack is not prudent, and playing dead is not realistic. More specifically, we appease in situations where the unequal power relationship is embedded in the lifeworld of the victim. Called “traumatic entrapment,” this dynamic is a key feature of childhood sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, schoolyard bullying, and working for a tyrannical boss. In these contexts, it’s fairly easy to see appeasement as a trauma response and survival strategy. So, the appeaser faces a double bind of sorts. If they fully express the defense response, they risk potential violence or exclusion from the group, but if they simultaneously freeze the defense response in an act of appeasement, then they pay the heavy metabolic price of high dual stress system activation. Biology and cultural conditioning influence one another in both the response and the outcome.

Does appeasement extend beyond individual interactions? We have only recently begun to expand our understanding of trauma to consider how trauma responses like appeasement might play out in social situations beyond one-to-one interactions. For example, what does appeasement look like when these abusive power dynamics extend to whole groups of people, not just individuals? In the narrative above, the Black women were not treated as individuals but instead seen as members of their social group. And although their behavior that Sunday morning was unremarkably benign, it was assumed they were “up to no good,” requiring high-stakes police intervention. Like the women in this event, many members of oppressed social groups deal with these kinds of threats, intimidations, and negative assumptions on an everyday basis. And the impact often goes far beyond feeling hassled or irritated; research demonstrates that daily microaggressions can result in lasting traumatic effects which can include serious physical and mental health consequences. The impact is compounded by the fact that escape is largely impossible; most oppressed people must regularly interact with the dominant social group as a matter of practical survival. To understand what’s going on when a member of a subordinated social group engages in appeasement, it’s critical that we see oppression as continuously traumatic and the abusive inter-group dynamics of oppression (e.g. racism, sexism, ableism, etc.) as social contexts in which traumatic entrapment can be experienced and trauma responses should be expected. Viewed within this larger frame, we argue for a critical appraisal of the role of appeasement in navigating the sociopolitical realities in which we currently live.

What does appeasement look like? In describing appeasement, it’s important to distinguish it from another term — fawning — with which it is sometimes used interchangeably. Although the scant literature does not offer a consensus definition, fawning has been posited as the fourth “F” in the fight-flight-freeze sequence of responses to threat. Used mostly in reference to childhood abuse, fawning tends to refer to co-dependent behavior between two people that is suggestive of an inability to set interpersonal boundaries. Although fawning can be understood as a form of appeasement because it functions to defuse threat, not all appeasement is fawning.

Appeasement is most easily recognized in frankly submissive behaviors — making oneself smaller, head bowed, averted gaze — but a closer look shows a much wider range of actions. To defuse a threat, an appeaser may not speak out or may instead take the blame by apologizing. Appeasement can emerge as friendly behavior like the laughing and joking of the Black women in the Airbnb story or as physical touch and sexual advances, the latter of which can also cross over into the submission category.

Grace (pseudonym), a 22-year old photographer, was excited for her date with Aziz Ansari, a celebrated comedic actor known for his insightful and generally enlightened take on relationships in his book Modern Romance and Netflix show Master of None. She willingly went back to his apartment, but when Ansari became sexually aggressive, she subtly and repeatedly rebuffed him by moving away, not responding to his entreaties and demands, and even asking for him to slow down. “Most of my discomfort was expressed in me pulling away and mumbling.” At one point, she said, “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.” Ansari slowed his pursuit only momentarily and eventually Grace performed oral sex because she felt “really pressured.” Ansari commented that it “doesn’t look like you hate me.” Grace eventually extricated herself, breaking down in tears on the cab ride home. When she shared her feelings of violation with him, Ansari was surprised that he had “misread the situation” and apologized. Her entire experience was chronicled in a much-discussed Babe article several months later. What was not named though in those ensuing discussions was the explicit role of appeasement in Grace’s experience.

Striking in the #MeToo Movement’s spotlight on survivors’ experiences of sexual violence was the shock of accused perpetrators at how differently survivors interpreted the events in question. Just like Ansari, the accused often reported that the survivor was affable and unbothered in the moment. But as Canadian equine therapist Sarah Schlote states, “Not all stillness is calm, not all compliance is consent.” And herein lies one of the key features of appeasement: its invisibility to the appeased. While overt capitulation is easy to spot, most appeasement behavior is marked by its superficial invisibility. The display of a seemingly casual smile or a nod of the head can look like consent to the person who holds more power, but the appeaser’s internal experience is dramatically different. By masking their fear and distress, the appeaser avoids calling more attention to the perceived or actual danger of their situation — the threat of physical harm, social shaming, or economic damage. After the interaction, the divergent perspectives become obvious. The appeased reads that all is clear and fine, business as usual. The appeaser has the dual and conflicting experience of internal distress and outwardly calm acquiescence.

While appeasement is at heart a self-defensive behavior, there can be a sense of shame for not having acted in visible protest. Not being loud enough in their objections may lead the appeaser to question their own distressing experience. It took Grace a long time to validate her experience. “I was debating if this was an awkward sexual experience or sexual assault.” An appeaser’s self-doubt is magnified by the invisibility of their experience to others, especially considering that the appeased holds more power and often defines the narrative privately and publicly. Accepting that dominant narrative forcibly calms the internal tensions of confusion and doubt in the appeaser as they see themselves as wrong in their original self-appraisal and apologizes for having distress. The appeaser is now “fine” with the situation and — in an ultimate act of appeasement — now identifies with the appeased person’s perspective.

What are the implications of appeasement for everyday life? According to psychology researcher Dacher Keltner, “Appeasement begins when the conditions of social relations lead one individual to anticipate aggression from others.” For members of oppressed social groups, this means that expressions of modesty, politeness, agreeableness, shyness, uncertainty, or deference may instead be an attempt to deflect or prevent aggression from members of the dominant social group. When one lives in close and direct contact with members of a dominant social group, appeasing may become so automatic that the appeaser may not even feel distressed in the moment. Instead, the cost comes later — as exhaustion, demoralization, and an erosion of one’s sense of dignity and self-worth.

On the other hand, members of dominant social groups may fail to recognize appeasement from others for what it is (an attempt to defuse anticipated aggression) and instead mistake it as sincere and unforced consent. Because the appeasing behavior is not genuine agreement but false agreeableness, not voluntary respect but expected deference, the authenticity of relationships between members of dominant and subordinated social groups is compromised. Research also suggests that social power can result in a diminished capacity to read the nonverbal cues of dissent or discomfort in those with less power — as appears to have been the case for Aziz Ansari. Conversely, folks who are socialized to expect appeasing behaviors from others may come to view a failure to appease as disrespect, unfriendliness, or insolence — like the White woman in the Airbnb example at the beginning of this article.

So what can we do? To dismantle the mechanisms that perpetuate and enforce abusive social hierarchies, it’s not enough to simply become more aware of appeasing behavior. We must act on our awareness. However, when oppressed social groups stop appeasing — individually or en masse — there are real and often dangerous consequences. While these consequences are often worth enduring in the struggle for liberation, there are some situations where the risks of standing up are too great and the bodymind’s decision to appease is the wiser choice. And there are still other contexts where, because of strong social and biological conditioning, we appease even in places where the stakes are low and we actually could object without much consequence.

These calculations are happening in our physiology and psychology simultaneously and are amenable to some conscious control. If we can be more aware (and perhaps more understanding) of our appeasement, we can begin to appraise the usefulness of our defense responses in a given situation. When appeasing is adaptive and protects us from harm, knowing that can relieve the shame and self-doubt of inaction. When appeasing is merely habitual and nonadaptive, we might want to use trauma-informed, body-based approaches to settle any unnecessary defense response. In either case, we are choosing a path to minimize the harm of living in abusive social hierarchies while saving our energy for the bigger battles; those places where we simply won’t appease.