Is reacting to anger with calmness a bad thing?

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So, the situation that I've seen is that when someone is angry at me, striving to keep a level head so as not to anger them further only has the opposite effect.

Case in point, whenever my mother gets angry at me, getting in my face and yelling obscenities, waving her arms and such, I keep a solemn, straight face and try to speak as gently as I can. I try to reason with her, talk her down, or even just keep quiet and let her wear herself out. However, all this ever seems to accomplish is making her rage even more, sometimes to the point of physical violence.

I had a similar issue with a roommate who witnessed me talking about him to my girlfriend online. He got angry about me talking behind his back, and when I quietly agreed to his demands to not talk about him again (which is apparently a lie, now that I think about it, seeing that I am talking about the incident), he got even louder and told me to stop agreeing with him.

My theory is that these people feel that I am being disingenuous, or I am secretly looking down on them, but I cannot help them if they are that paranoid. If my theory is wrong, however, then I'm terribly confused as to what to do in these situations.

I think reacting with calmness is a good thing... but it does seem to make the other person even more angry (in my opinion).

If despite your efforts to calm them down and defuse the situation somebody escalates to the point of becoming verbally abusive and physically violent, I strongly suspect that the fault lies with them, not you.

Silence the angry man with love,
Silence the ill-natured man with kindness,
Silence the miser with generosity,
Silence the liar with truth.

No, if someone gets angry at you for not getting angry at them, it implies a really warped, needy personality; I'd ditch such people at once.

if u keep a solemn face, it can enfuriate. for a reason, that being angry, they have warped perception, and they feel like u are ignoring them, even looking at them, that u dont hear them and their pain. so they get angrier. its very hard, sometimes impossible to get thru that. i've so been on both ends of that line so many times. sometimes exploding back does the trick. they get responce, a shouting match happens, then u can make up and feel well, better, both. because whole emotional strain had gone away. sometimes letting out ur stress in form of clear distress, not anger. they see tears, they instantly understand they went over the line. also strain less after. and then, if ONLY u are well, very secure and really calm, u can go by giving them hugs, so to speak. managing to calm them by care. just dont be impartial, that is sub-optimal. even more sub-optimal than responding rage. even if it seems weird. such is human nature) we need responce. hope i helped.

The reason they get so angry is to get a reaction. They don't feel as guilty if the other person reacts angrily. If their anger is met with calmness, they won't feel as justified. I've had that happen, as well.

You may be interested in a book called "Games People Play" by Eric Berne. It addresses something similar to what you are talking about. I will briefly explain as clearly as I can...

What Berne defines as a "game" is essentially an interaction in which people act and react emotionally rather than rationally, and games can only work if both parties participate. When someone addresses a problem they have with you by yelling and going ballistic, it's part of a game in which they expect you to react with an equal amount of anger or despair. When you react rationally and with a level head, you stop the game in it's tracks, which could agitate the other person because they don't understand what happened!