Silent Harassment as a Structural Phenomenon: A Theoretical Reframing Based on Avoidant-Obsessive Personality Dynamics and Meta-Communication Dysfunction

This paper introduces the concept of silent harassment as a form of psychological aggression within organizations, characterized by systematic communication denial and social exclusion. Unlike overt verbal or physical abuse, silent harassment operates through ambiguity, making it difficult to identify, challenge, or remediate. Drawing upon the interplay between avoidant and obsessive-compulsive personality traits and grounding its theoretical analysis in the dysfunction of meta-communication, this study proposes a novel explanatory framework for understanding silence as a deliberate and damaging organizational act. The paper situates this concept within the broader theory of structural selection pressure (Hiraoka, 2025a), arguing that silent harassment constitutes a micro-level manifestation of cultural degeneration within hierarchical institutions. Through a hypothetical case-based analysis, the model demonstrates how psychological dispositions and organizational dynamics interact to create environments where exclusion is normalized and competence is silently suppressed.