Hungry Zombies: Recognition Hunger and the Zombie Circulation Model of Workplace Aggression

This paper proposes the concept of the Hungry Zombie to explain how workplace aggression is reproduced through anger, status labeling, micro-devaluation, silence, and unresolved recognition hunger. Existing studies have examined workplace aggression through abusive supervision, workplace bullying, emotional contagion, social learning, organizational silence, psychological safety, labeling, self-esteem, and recognition. However, less attention has been paid to the process through which those who have been psychologically diminished within anger-based workplace cultures may themselves become agents who devalue and attack weaker others. The term “Hungry Zombie” is used as a structural metaphor, not as a derogatory label for individuals. It refers to a subject who has internalized status tags within an anger-based workplace culture and seeks temporary superiority by devaluing others. The central issue is not merely the imitation of anger. Rather, it is the circular process through which a devalued subject attempts to restore self-worth by placing another person below them. This paper develops the Zombie Circulation Model to describe this process. The model connects recognition hunger, anger-based domination, micro-devaluation, internalized status labels, and downward aggression as a recursive pattern of workplace aggression. In this circulation, those who are “bitten” may exit the workplace, become infected by the same aggressive pattern, or transform the experience into structural resistance through documentation, analysis, reporting, reform, or theoretical reflection. The central claim is that workplace aggression is sustained not only by anger itself, but by the circulation of recognition hunger. In such environments, silence, submission, diminished self-esteem, inability to object, and relative inferiority become emotional resources consumed by aggressive actors. The paper concludes that interventions must not only suppress anger or punish aggressive individuals, but also redesign recognition flows, interrupt status labeling, protect psychological safety, and dismantle the conditions under which downward aggression becomes a source of temporary self-worth.