Ask vs. Guess Culture
jeanhsu.substack.com
jeanhsu.substack.com
Over the years I definitely insulted several southern guests by mostly ignoring them, and she definitely projected insult onto several northern guests by assuming that they were secretly judging us for not being better hosts. We've since realized that southerners tend to prefer "guess" culture and northerners tend to prefer "ask" culture, to use the terminology from the article. There are certainly many exceptions, but this generalization has taught her to chill out a little over hosting duties, and taught me to pick up some slack when taking care of guests.
We still both greatly prefer our native cultures. I don't like being fawned over or offered things I don't want, and she is extremely recalcitrant when it comes to asking for anything.
[1] I mention the distant ancestral backgrounds because it's amusing to me how well I get along with northern Europeans who are plainly spoken and "rude" by US standards, and how a lot of proper hosting culture from the UK reminds me of how her family operates. She finds Scandinavians and Dutch incredibly rude, whereas I find the English hilariously polite, even to their own detriment.
Tannen's main suggestion is at least if you're aware that someone communicates differently than you do, you might either make accommodation, or better understand things that might frustrate you.
I think ask vs guess is a good start, but looking at my experience and looking at what people are talking about here, there is at least one more dimension at play here.
The person on the corner asking “excuse me sir may I please ask you a question” almost certainly has ulterior motives. Locals in a busy neighborhood ignore a guy like that a few times a day.
But the person on the corner who says “hey which way is the 7 train?” with no preamble is gonna get good answers, despite being less traditionally polite.
Where there is constant stimulation, the cultural norms get a lot more direct
I'd never do this in Los Angeles where I live part time.
I context switch based on which home I'm at, North Georgia or Los Angeles.
My experience is the opposite. I grew up in New England, and it seemed like there were a large number of unspoken norms (in both business and personal culture) that were really hard to grok. Moving out to the Bay Area, people are refreshingly direct. "Want to come work for equity on my crypto startup?" "No, you're crazy." "Okay goodbye!"
I think that where hypocrisy and indirection are ingrained in Silicon Valley, it's because of diverging incentives and a lust for power. In other words, people won't unconsciously hurt your feelings because they assume you would've consciously spoken up; they will consciously screw you over because they want that billion dollar deal. It feels very much like an ask culture, though, regardless of how crazy the asks are.
1) A substantial number of individuals in the bay aren't originally from there.
2) Assuming the role of a startup founder inherently demands a familiarity with ask culture.
One of the initial steps frequently involves requesting significant amounts of money from individuals, with minimal consequence to the borrower if it doesn't materialize to anything!
Bay Area startup culture is an extreme example of Bay Area culture in general, which is an extreme example of Western U.S. culture, which is an extreme example of American culture, which is an extreme example of general western European culture. But they're all marked by fluid, transient groupings of people that came from all over.
To phrase it differently, a significant number of the people you’re thinking of probably wont establish lasting roots in the Bay and thus wouldn't be passing down that culture to the subsequent generation of Bay Area youngsters.
It's a thought-provoking query indeed though, pondering what characterizes the "prototypical San Franciscan" and how that might evolve over time!
Weird, I moved from Boston to the Bay Area and I have the opposite experience.
In Boston if someone asked me to have dinner with them it was always just dinner. If they had other intentions they would state them up front.
In the Bay Area a good fraction of the time the other person has an unstated intention (hiring, dating, asking for intros to dates, asking for intros to investors, asking for other help ...) that I usually need to dig up before I say yes or no. The thing is, sometimes it is a yes, I just wish people would be more upfront that there is an agenda around this "dinner".
“Gee, that startup sounds cool. Let me get back to you.”
To quote Jerad/Donald at Silicon Valley:
“I like when people yell at me, at least I know where I stand”.
Along with a bunch of other more medical reading
I'm late 30's and same btw.
In fact, I was proud of being so “responsible” as a kid, not that I was neglected and parentified.
This is pretty frustrating as 90s-kid who had a Good Childhood™ and struggles with interpersonal issues. I have a close friend from childhood who also had quite a Good Childhood™ and he can't shut up about "trauma" and it seems like every two years he has this big epiphany about how he addressed some "trauma" he was previously repressing and how now that he's done so he's All Better Now™. His behavior and overall life outcomes do not have any correlation with these epiphanies. Both of our lives absolutely pale in comparison to the lives of average children in previous generations in terms of 'trauma'. Minimal bullying, no fights, always plenty of toys and food, loving parents, etc.
I know some people with real, legitimate trauma (verbal and physical abuse) and they said that visiting a therapist really helped them to feel a lot better. In such cases of legitimate trauma, I agree that one should do something about it if it's making you feel bad. However, many of those people were already. interpersonally excellent before and after 'addressing' their trauma.
I have had people (including the friend from the first paragraph) suggest I need to "work on my childhood trauma" but really and honestly I can't think of a single thing that was legitimately traumatic. I could take my worst experiences, which I have moved on from and don't feel any need[0] to think about, and inflate them, but I'm pretty sure that would be creating a new psychological problem.
[0]I don't feel any hesitance to thinking about them either. I can sit and ponder them for a whole afternoon if I like, without emotional fluctuation. They're just memories.
We live in the safest, least racist, least sexist, least antisemitic generation in history. At the same time, automation and productivity has reduced demand for human labor, and people increasingly can’t afford the rent. Perhaps the answer to many disparities isn’t systemic sexism, racism etc. but economic factors. Whatever you are worried about, your grandparents had it much worse.
Also, let’s improve our systems to stop polluting the environment and destroying ecosystems for corporate profit at the expense of future generations. That’s the major issue of our day, far bigger than climate change.
We have approximately the lowest unemployment rate in modern history.
It doesn’t count the people who have opted out of the workforce.
It doesn’t count the job insecuroty of the gig economy. Or the people with terrible conditions.
It actually underscores the fact that both sexes flooded the labor pool in the last few decades, automation increased and wages got depressed due to all these factors.
USSR also had near-total employment, for men and women, way earlier than USA did. And ironically, the rent cost a ton less. But people overall couldn’t afford that much.
Your grandfather could have supported an entire family on one man’s paycheck, and paid for an entire house. Today, millennials onwards can’t afford any of that. The generation of adults with the least savings in probably a century.
But, as I said, we still have it amaing. Medical advances, technology like air conditioning, electricity and so on. The Internet spreads so much knowledge around the world. I’m just saying that the remaining problems are often rooted in economic issues, more than a rise in “systemic X ism”
Gig economy and short stints at jobs are an example of how little employers really value their labor force, as opposed to the “company man” who worked for decades and got a pension.
Not the headline number, but in the US you certainly can find this data if you want it, in the U4, U5, and U6 rates:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U4RATE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U5RATE
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE
It only goes back to 1994, but these measures are currently all at or near the lows over the that period.
Given the juxtaposition of the claims above, I think it is useful to note that demand for labor is still relatively high (unemployment rate at ~3.5% in the US). The reason for unaffordable rents is driven more by the supply of housing not growing along with demand IMO.
The way our primary caregivers relate and respond to us when we're a) in our most rapid periods of development and b) completely dependent on them for everything absolutely has an influence on the way we turn out. How could it not?
So there's no such thing as Neutral/No Influence, there is only identifying what effects there are and learning how to lean either into or out of those influences on a situational basis. All of this definitely applies to childhood trauma, but it doesn't HAVE to be trauma for that logic to apply. Figuring that stuff out is a helpful part of maturing, and it doesn't have to be a critical or negative thing.
In many ways I've come to appreciate and love my parents even more as I've worked through the ways they raised me the best they could, given the resources they had, but in ways that I can now see preferable alternatives to.
I think it's the biggest "I Love You" in the world to self-consciously seek to grow beyond the limitations that were passed on to me, just like I want my little girl to outgrow the ones I consciously or unconsciously hand down to her.
It helps a lot of people, but it’t also a trap for those who have more deep things to work through, having spend 6 years stalled out in CBT before coming to grips with the deep trauma and neglect, and the dissociation that was so prevalent in my life that CBT therapists never even bothered screening for. Ask anyone with an emotionally neglectful or abusive upbringing what CBT did for them and you’ll get quite a few nasty answers.
Yeah. That's one of the dangers the book I had talked about. CBT is a tool for rewiring the brain. If you have deep things to work out and don't recognize it, CBT will do exactly what it says on the tin and rewire around things that need to be explored.
That's very not good.
I'm bipolar and use CBT a lot. Identifying if the problem is logic-based is key to its application. Logic cannot override depression or mania, which means CBT doesn't work and alternative strategies are needed. Usually I switch to some variant of DBT techniques. (It's so automatic at this point it's hard to identify all of what I'm doing.)
In my experience, learning when to apply CBT is much harder than learning CBT.
If there's a sure-fire way to create a mental health problem, it's to tell yourself you don't deserve to have a problem because other people have worse problems.
Kids with bad childhood will not categorize semi bad childhood as trauma, but have worst interpersonal relationships, worst stress handling, abuse drugs or alcohol more often and display whole range of at risk behaviors
It is simply not true that being poor or abused or neglected makes people resilient.
I also had Good ChildhoodTM by your definition.
Still I’m pretty sure I have been traumatized by the two big moves of my childhood, loosing my childhood friendships twice.
It doesn’t look big, I am ok at socializing so I have friends but I know that when shit hits the fan, it happens that I dream of my first childhood friend and I’m pretty convinced that this is why I sometimes feel alone even when I’m well surrounded.
The point wasn’t to tell my life but to say that you can’t really judge other’s "traumas". It’s highly personal how you feel about something and when someone doesn’t have something you have (in my case childhood friends) it’s easy to feel like it’s not important (maybe you can’t understand because your own childhood friendship eroded normally and you don’t feel like it’s an issue)
Some of these people absolutely fell apart. It was the first time they’d ever lost anyone and they couldn’t process it. When gently pressed, we would find out they had no pets growing up. They had not lost so much as a goldfish.
A painless life can set you up for failure when real adversity comes. You lack the resilience, and in some cases the empathy, to navigate these situations. That’s not trauma, but it is loss.
Those experiences gave me a whole new perspective on peers whose parents got them goldfish or hamsters at a young age. Some of these parents were setting up object lessons. Basically the chicken pox party of loss.
At that point I had lost a dog, and as a sensitive kid it wrecked me. And the worst part of it was every time I caught my breath some new asshole would offer his condolences. Thanks, I wasn’t thinking about my dog for ten minutes and now I’m thinking about her again. Can we just stop talking about it please?
I learned to offer sympathy without an agenda. Engaging them is trying to make them process on your timeline. It’s thoughtless, even a little cruel. Definitely selfish. A good friend will step in and push if weeks later you have not mourned. But the next day? Give them space, Jesus.
I really appreciated, in that moment, the northern midwestern trope of bringing the bereaved food and just sitting with them. Let them talk, or not. I almost pulled a muscle watching Lars and the Real Girl. The little old ladies sitting in his living room, knitting, surrounded by casseroles and hot dishes. Just talking to each other and watching him out of the corner of their eyes. Talking about anything else. Yep that’s about it. Here if you need us, not holding our breath for you to say so.
Having a kid lose a pet at that age is a major thing for them to process.
I love the school, but the disorganised over-parenting libertarian hippies can be overbearing at times.
I'm all for growing children with creative teaching and avoiding rote memorization, but I'd be horrified if that was at the cost of missing the best years for setting the pillars of rational thought.
Reading is taught later in a Steiner school than at most schools, but not to any detriment measurable later in schooling.
I’m not sure how one would accurately quantify the final outcome as demographics etc come into it. From my time at school there are surgeons, physicists, engineers (or various types), lawyers, mathematicians, accountants, tv producers, teachers etc. We had our share of dropouts too.
I also don’t believe that the early years are the most important for what is learned, and that they are more important for learning how to learn and how to enjoy the process.
The worst thing that's every happened to someone is still the worst thing that's ever happened to them. Though it might not be something like mental/physical abuse, it's still their bottom even if it pales in comparison to someone else's. Also, lots of families have secrets and can portray a healthy image when in reality we generally see people at their "best" in social settings. I think the key here is self-awareness without diminishment, which can be difficult.
Also, at least with my algorithms, there is just so much bombardment from social media about things like trauma, mental illness, and neurodivergence where one can get lost in what they're being presented and be convinced that just because they read the dictionary for fun when they were younger that they're neurodivergent instead of possibly just being a curious child. If one is in a vulnerable state or just worn down from seeing all this, it almost incites a FOMO response of "hey, I was traumatized too!"
I do think that normalizing and acting to remove the stigma from discussing these things is a net positive overall but it can be damaging for sure
In a way it is the perfect excuse, a childhood determinism of sorts. Blame everything just to avoid ANY change of the self.
Not discounting that some people have terrible childhoods that are legitimately damaging, but losing a pet or a friend moving away or a grandparent dying is not that unusual and well within the scope of "normal things that happen" that normal people can (or should be expected to) handle.
The 'taking responsibility for ones own life' has a perverse failure mode where an individual is genuinely incapable of doing something, yet at the same time incapable of seeking help for the issue. These tend to lead to harmful downward spirals in those peoples lives.
if you have unresolved childhood trauma (people forget this is conditional) then resolving it is one of (not all) the requirements for fixing chronic interpersonal issues you may have (not everyone does).
If someones make all those mistakes at once, you get they tell you to heal your childhood trauma to fix your relationship disasters and it's like "My childhood was fine. And I had one argument with one person. I'm just gonna go talk to him about it..."
Let me just copy/paste an older comment of mine:
---
Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead.
This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about how much room that couch is wasting or how much time you spend walking around the couch to get to the chair. Sometmies you stub your toe on the way around, but everyone trips every now and then. You've been doing this so long that it is completely unconscious. Hell, you can and do navigate the room in the dark.
Friends ask you about your living room furniture and you—completely honestly as far as you know—say it's all fine. You describe your chair in detail. It's not perfect, but it's serviceable. Certainly lots of other people have furniture that's in worse shape. At least you don't have any of those problems.
Then you sit down with a therapist for a few hours and they say, "Hey, what's up with that couch?"
But thank you for providing readers an example of the kind of condescension I was describing.
At least from your writing I believe you're a very introspective person. The trouble with introspection is that it is an imperfect mirror. We tend to self find solutions for our problems, but we do so at the risk of completely missing the blind spots in our life.
Coming back at the previous person with the term condescending is concerning. At least my observation is you believe you have covered all of your bases, but this gets problematic in cases of omission. Yea, your parents did not hit you, but that does not mean they taught you how to have healthy relationships, for example, something that leads to a lifetime of trauma in some people due omissive ignorance.
Simply never being in a car accident while growing up doesn't mean you spontaneously know how to drive a car.
Personal example, I had a good (girl) friend when I was like six, I was very lonely / isolated before she came around and we played together and the like. But then her parents moved and I never saw her again.
And for many years, that was it, it happened, couldn't do anything about it, nothing abnormal about it. But then because of Reasons I ended up going to therapy, and that event (plus others) are probably linked to a fear of abandonment / commitment, of a pessimism when it comes to relationships (as in, don't get too close, it'll end and there's nothing you can do about it).
But also there's a factor of "My 'trauma' isn't that bad because others have had it worse". Doesn't mean you aren't valid either.
People by and large don’t understand how their brains work, but if they’re suffering or struggling psychologically, they seem to want some sort of explanatory model to make sense of it. So it’s easy for people to buy into these models. The trauma model is one of the more fashionable ones these days. The problems with this model, especially the more pop-psychology version, are (a) it doesn’t fit what we know about actual, serious trauma anyway and (b) it seems to encourage people to catastrophize their past experiences in order to try and make their life story fit the model. This is also counterproductive because catastophization is itself a cognitive distortion that should be corrected rather than indulged. Focusing on childhood trauma in particular also sounds suspiciously Freudian to me.
Another thing to point out is that even serious traumatic experiences don’t necessarily lead to psychological issues in the future. Most people have a natural resiliency to them. But if people believe that any unpleasant or negative experience is going to give them full blown PTSD, it’s more likely to happen. There are cases of this happening cross-culturally when well meaning western aid workers offer to counsel people in third world countries who experienced natural disasters.
If you're an average American of today, you're living a life of comfort and abundance that could not have been imagined 100 years ago, and yet you'll have about the same trauma as did your equivalent back then, even though they would have dealt with things that would have killed you, figuratively or even literally.
Kind of related to Durkheim's "Society of Saints" idea [1].
This suggests a therapeutic vector: increase the variance in your own life. It probably won't be technically hard, though it would be psychologically very difficult. If the theory is right, many of your minor traumas should quickly dissolve.
It would take some amount of will to pull this off, of course. Though probably less suffering than the aggregated suffering conferred by the traumas.
[1] https://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/reference/durkheim-on-devi...
Schemas are just your set of inbuilt, instantaneous responses to common situations or thoughts.
You don't need trauma to have maladaptive schemas.
"One of the strangest fixations of AFWL metaphysics is on a substance called 'trauma' that they believe is 'stored in the body' in small saclike organs where it constantly threatens to be 'triggered' and erupt out of its ducts. They assert life itself is about 'processing trauma'"
Some people are lucky to not have significant childhood trauma which means it was never needing to be resolved
If it worked for you, that's great! No joke, that's fantastic. But not for nothing, too, is there the old joke about the guy who just started a 12-step program and now no sooner sees someone take a drink in a bar but assumes they're an alcoholic.
“What works for you only works for you, so you might not have discovered that it works for anything else, but only if you were really paying attention.”
- Ben Franklin
I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?
"yall doin okay?"
Speaking as a Southerner, this sentence is so on point.
This is jarring to people who cannot receive a no, or who cannot articulate one.
This is abstract, but stay with me here
I'm also Southern, and I think that the inclination towards that kind of belligerent helpfulness comes from trying to figure out what your guests want, and making sure they don't have to ask you for anything.
in my experience the response is "we're all good out here, but thank you!" -- which is classic Guess culture
In my own experience, I once had an obnoxious colleague who asked "How was your weekend?". I didn't like the question because one, I don't like to talk about what I do / did in my spare time, and two, it was leading because the guy was really really eager to talk about HIS weekend, but... I didn't care, or else I would've asked.
If it's said as a greeting, "how y'all doing?" usually means "how are your family?," which also tends to be meant very genuinely.
Even outside of a host-guest dynamic, I do think Southerners tend to care more about pleasantries; when they ask about your weekend, they're a little more likely to really want to know.
Of course, this is all very broad strokes based on anecdotal experience. Plenty of cold/self-aggrandizing jerks in the South, too!
I said this down the thread but my experience (grew up in the south) has always been that Southerners are very up-front about trying to meet your needs before you can even ask for them. That was always how I was taught to host, anyway.
And I think that weirdly, that's more aligned with Guess culture: the person who needs something should never have to ask for it.
As a southerner, I don't agree. It's split by the directionality of the request. And I think that's what makes southern culture distinct.
We'd never "ask" when we're the guest, only when we're the host. "Ask"-y guests are considered rude. "Guess"-y hosts are considered unwelcoming and inhospitable.
You can "ask" a stranger how they're doing or if they need anything, but you don't impose upon them. It's often common to strike up conversations this way.
It's a directionality. "Ask" when you're the giver, "guess" when you're the receiver.
You always hold the door. You don't ask for someone to do it for you, but you probably feel miffed if they don't, because it's expected that everyone extends each other courtesy.
"Southern hospitality".
Just a guess but could be that attitude has lots more to do with how many are poor or not and how many generations they've been poor, or lived in cities, like a lag time sorta thing. Nothing I really know about just sharing because it might be interesting even if wrong
The upper classes of the Deep South, where people are very religious and often call folks "Mr./Mizz. First Name" as a mark of both respect and familiarity at the same time, seem to skew Guess culture. But then the upper classes generally seem to skew Guess culture.
The South is also a place where people are more likely to own guns and join the military. Military culture is mostly Ask culture. They tend to be very direct and some people find this refreshing/no BS and others find it rude, crude and socially unacceptable if you are influenced by that.
Working class stiffs in the South may be more influenced by the very direct Ask culture of the American military.
So it's probably a lot more complex than regional cultures.
Just that there are variances across the region and those are some influences I know of.
For some people that can be rude or shocking. For others the opposite can be exhausting. The middle ground of mind games is the fucking worst. “Go do that thing I don’t like. It’s fine.” “Why did he go? He knew I was upset!” He answered your passive aggressive bullshit with his own passive aggressive bullshit. That’s why. Good luck in couples therapy.
You're American, your wife is American.
When it comes to talking about US history, people are quick to denigrate the US and explain how young of a country it is. When it comes to talking about the evolution and origins of American culture, people are quick to denigrate the US and explain how far removed it is from its European origins.
Pet peeve from a European: the American habit of using their distant ancestor’s European ethnicity as a shorthand for stereotypical personality and culture today a) undervalues the massive political and cultural changes in Europe since their ancestor’s emigration und b) undervalues the regional differences inside their ancestor’s origin country. Being german I find both Ask and Guess culture here, just 50 km apart. And often in the same place, differing by class or the rural/urban divide. Describing „German“ as just Ask culture is rather wrong from my perspective. I know the outside and Hollywood stereotypes differ.
(And c), I think, distant ancestors ethnic stereotypes undervalues the melting pot/salad bowl effect over generations of the US itself.)
Now try to figure that across the pond with zillions of native cultures merged with an (older than North America itself) Southern Hispanic culture from Mexico to the Patagonia close to the South Pole.
The US is the opposite of a monolithic culture.
And even in regions themselves you can find alien customs to each other. For instance, in the Basque Country from valley to valley. Or in Andalusia with huge differences between East and West. Yes, like a Mandelbrot fractal. Spain it's like that.
You can find here any climate. Desserts? Glaciars? Tundra like climates? Cold winters down to -30C on high peaks? Dry heat? Windy heat? Dry cold? Windy cold? Rainy weather, like London if not more? All of them across the country. Now, from these megadiverse climate diffs you can guess you will find zillions of cultures and subcultures because, you know, traditions and architecture change a lot if you live between ponds in Cantabria with more mist than in a Stephen King novel compared to a dry dessert in Almeria were "Spagetthi Westerns" were filmed here and white homes with Arabic architecture reflecting the Sun was a must in order to just survive the Summer.
One person from London, the other from Belfast? Both British.
One from Barcelona, the other from Madrid? Both Spanish.
One from Prague, the other from Bratislava? Both Czechoslovakian, until a couple decades ago.
Do you think American doesn't have cultural differences within? Or that those cultures don't correlate at all with geography? Or with ancestry?
Edit: I want to move to the Netherlands, if I have kids there they'll be Dutch
> she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity
This reminds me of a quote from Buffett from about 40 years ago. He said something along the lines of "when women are raised, they hear and see a million reasons why they cannot do things whereas men see and hear a million reasons why they can do things". If I would be convinced by the world that I am not good, then sure I would treat guests amazingly well. If I would be convinced by the world I‘m amazing, then why bother treating guests well? They can say it if they need anything.
I‘m happy to hear counterarguments if you have them
All this seems like good old stereotyping to me. It often comes down to the individual family or even the individual person. Maybe their social skills, maybe their level of selfishness. Maybe also how much they care about how they're seen by others vs how comfortable they are being themselves. A lot of factors can play into this.
Treat everyone, no matter who they are, like someone you admire and you can’t go wrong anywhere in the world.
When you make a huge generalization like "the northern states I'm from primarily developed their culture from Scandinavia and Germany and tend to be more 'ask' than 'guess'", it's possible to immediately find tons of counterexamples. It tends to make people feel good to find flaws with generalizations, but they then argue too far the other way. "Since there are many counterexamples, your claim that the North is mostly 'ask' and the South is mostly 'guess' doesn't hold water."
But what exactly are they saying? The Northern US and the Southern US are exactly the same? There's no possible generalization to make about the cultures from either place?
Instead, at every possible delineation people have made in their counterarguments (poor vs. rich, urban vs. rural, man vs. woman), I find the same generalizations mostly apply. A poor northerner is likely more "ask" than a poor southerner, based on who I've met. Northern men are generally more "ask" than southern men. My wife's father is certainly less intensely curious about my needs than my own mother, but he's far, far more curious about my needs than my father, and almost every other northern father I've met. I've met a great many people, and lived all around the US, so I'm not just shooting from the hip here.
I think we're generally a high-context culture, and the "guessing" culture as postulated in the post immediately reminds me of that. I don't know if other Northern European cultures are less high-context but it makes me wonder if high vs. low context (possibly similar to guessing vs. asking) is not quite the same axis as bluntness.
As a somewhat tongue in cheek example -- if you have guests over you should offer coffee three times. They may refuse the first two and accept the third time. But if you do not offer thrice, they'll go home and complain that you were too stingy to even provide coffee.
You should read the manner of refusal in these kinds of cases, and offer more profusely if the situation demands.
I am built this way. It's weird to admit, but not only I will not ask directly; I am very hesitant to accept things even when offered. Definitely very high on the guess culture scale, and I know that's incompatible with how some other cultures operate, so I'm trying to be mindful about it and behave more directly when situation demands.
I always saw it as a way for a host to try a couple of alternatives before working on the actual need.
> You say which one you want or you get nothing. Your choice.
It doesn't work if I'm visiting you, that's for sure. It works well and without any friction in my own culture. So there's the need to be mindful of the situation and perhaps consider a bit longer before going with my instincts.
And if the worst comes to pass and you don't offer again, then maybe I'll realize our differences and just ask for that coffee after all.
From there it continues towards my knowing that when I arrive somewhere they are sort of socially obligated to offer whatever they have to me regardless of whether they have the means to or want to. Maybe I feel like they would be more comfortable sitting and chatting with me but they are insisting on standing and serving me with drinks and such. So I say no initially, I want them to rest for a moment. But they indicate, by asking again, that it's no problem, and that in fact they will be making something for themselves regardless of what I say, at which point I think about if I actually want something.
it it's sort of like instead of primarily looking after yourself and your own needs, it becomes more of a collaborative project
This to me is ask culture. On the other hand, guess culture would be someone making tea before I even arrive and serving it to me, expecting me to like it and drink it. Sorry but I don't drink tea. Please just ask me if I want one because if you don't have coffee, I'd rather just have a glass of water. But now that you've served this I won't say no because my guess is that it'd offend you, so I just nip a bit but don't drink it.
My family is a bit on the extreme of guessing culture to the point where we won't say anything and often folks find us very cold. I am made acutely aware of this everyday - from romantic partners, friends, and even strangers. My siblings and I were simply raised this way and it's all but impossible to change my behavior.
When we visit family in both Norway and Sweden it's almost like "whew" we can relax and breathe and everything feels very comfortable because the pace of society is slower, at restaurants and during normal activities out and about in the towns, you generally do not have to worry about folks approaching you.
My current partner is also a 3rd generation American, her family on both sides is Irish. They are incredibly social and outgoing and just 10 minutes she informed me we are having our neighbors over (he is a 2nd generation American of Irish descent and his partner is a 2nd generation Dutch). They are all very social and won't hesitate to offer a beer or help or anything really, which I certainly appreciate it but I'm uncomfortable accepting anything.
An even more extreme example is my older brother. I almost look like a social butterfly in comparison because I won't hesitate to complain about the weather, work, anything really. Whereas he is very stoic and quiet. We were in the construction industry with our father and we all would mostly work in silence building homes and apartment buildings, and when we expanded and hired new folks it made them really uncomfortable.
Once, my brother fell off a roof and he just laid there in a daze. I rushed down to him and by the time I got to him (no more than 20 seconds) he was already getting back up on the roof and just said "I'm fine". Another time his lung collapsed and he didn't tell anyone until his 5th day in the hospital! It's really disappointing sometimes.
I think you mean reluctant.
There's no social dance to it. Just don't be a leech, but accept help when it's needed and don't offer help unless you're genuinely willing to give it.
There is. What constitutes a leech varies from person to person, from culture to culture. Accepting help could easily lead to resentment, it's entirely possible they were offering help to seem generous while simultaneously expecting to be refused. Offering help at all could be offensive because you're in a position of strength while they're in a position of weakness, it implies they need you, ingratiates them with you, puts them in your debt.
Correctly navigating these waters requires instant judgements based on huge amounts of social information like status, reputation, personality, context, non-verbal cues like tone of voice and body language. It is difficult to do this deliberately because during conversations there is not enough time to deeply analyze anything. It's best left to an uncounscious mind honed sharp by repeated practice.
Every interpersonal relationship has its own dance, no matter where you're from. That's what socializing is.
And sadly, those not born with a neurotypical brain are very bad dancers.
they were offering help to seem generous
When out having drinks, it is considered (1) rude to let your friend's drink go empty, and (2) rude to refuse your friends offer for a drink.
Is this accurate? If so... one can imagine how this can get pretty messy!
As for (2) I don't know any culture where if a friend asks you to meet up with them that there isn't some expectation you'll accept the offer and if you can't you'll at least try to make the friend feel you'd really like to but for whatever reason you can't right now. If you just responded "no, I don't want meet" I'd except after a few such responses you'd no longer be friends in any culture.
I have a good friend whose parents are from Persia/Iran. He told me about this culture after we knew each other for quite some time. Even though he has never lived there, he often still has a hard time not to do this, which has resulted in some funny (at least for his friends) or uncomfortable situations over time. Knowing this, many things I ascribed to his character alone suddenly made a bit more sense.
I will say, the general lack of structure/formality in general social interactions is probably the biggest contrast between West Coast (especially SoCal) and either your New England or your wive's Southern upbringing. At least, this is my experience with transplants from those regions and their biggest complaints ("why don't people RSVP", "why are they wearing business casual to a fancy event", "why don't people bring gifts to get-togethers", etc).
So cal is in the west but most of the people didn't come over during western expansion or work on a farm or ranch. A lot came from the mid-west. So its sort of more like Arizona or even parts of Texas.
I think it boils down to people mistaking being polite to being nice.
I feel this in my bones. When I was a kid my dad went off on me after we visited someone's house and I saw cake on the counter and asked for a slice. That was just unacceptable. (Context: He was raised by people who lived through the depression. Food scarcity was a real thing in living memory.)
Even though his reaction was way overboard, I still believe this. Let people offer things, don't ask. (With a lot of caveats depending on context...)
There is an argument that such a worldview is slightly pathological.
It has to be OK to say no. In many scenarios or cultures it is considered rude to say no. So if you're not able to gracefully say no without being considered rude, it's correspondingly rude to ask because you're basically saying "do this for me or else you're rude."
It's not an ask at that point, it's a demand. If I'm the asshole if I say no, then I don't want to be asked the question in the first place.
I actually made this mistake, asking for a product directly instead of negatively, when I was in Tokyo. The clerk took me to the aisle and said, "If we had it, it'd be here." And there was no space for it. Took me a couple times to realize what had happened.
Adjacently, I really dislike the courtroom phrasing "Isn't it true?" that is sometimes depicted in legal dramas.
>"Do you not have X?"
In my head it sounds belligerent and accusatory. While the other form sounds polite.
This negative phrasing to induce a positive response, may be a Japan only thing?
"Do you not have bananas?" is like "is it true that there are no bananas?". Then if there are bananas, the host can gleefully surprise you with them and feel like they solved a problem for you. This is only if it's said in a constantly upwardly-shifting tone, though.
It can be said another way, same words different tone, which sounds more like "how perplexing, there's no bananas, let me just make sure I didn't miss them because I thought they should be here". The host usually backs their answer up with an explanation of why there are no bananas.
A third form exists where it does sound accusatory. Like "you should have bananas you piece of crap". Usually said in a huffy puffy I-dont-have-time-for-this tone.
Maybe it also helps that all the sentence markers that make a sentence polite, negative, interrogative all get added on to the end (to the verb) in japanese, which probably makes the construction slightly less awkward. In this case it may go something like motsu (to have) -> mochimasu (to have, polite) -> mochimasen (to not have, polite) -> mochimasenka (to not have, polite, interrogative).
I'm making a lot of assumptions here though, I don't know if this is anywhere close to correct.
I personally avoid this construction at all costs. When someone asks a negative question, I reply with "you're right" instead of "yes" to mean I agree with the negativity.
- Excuse me, do you not have any bread? - Sorry, this is a butcher's shop. We don't have any meat. The bakery is across the road. They're the shop that doesn't have any bread.
First, in shops people clearly ask for whether they have something.
It's super common for clothes and shoes stores to have more sizes in the back. I might ask the negative form when I think it's likely they don't have the size for a reason, e.g. if the same shirt in a different color is laid out in my size. "You don't have this one in XS (like that other one here)?"
In situations where you expect a product to be stocked right there in its usual place but it's not there it's natural to ask in the negative. Ex: bakery that usually has a full tray of croissants has an empty one / or none at all. If you can guess it it's also natural to ask specifically if they sold out.
In situations where it's not clear if a shop even has a certain product / size or if you cannot find one and you are looking, it's definitely not unexpected to ask positively. Ex: Asking whether a different option is available, or a different flavour than the one you see in front of you, or "do you have this particular vinyl from ...?" (it would be super odd to ask negatively in that last case).
Often actually both work and choosing the negative form IMO is harder to get right.
There isn't really an inappropriateness component, and frankly the clerk in your example either was rude or they simply said "if it's not on this shelf, we unfortunately don't have it". And to be honest, I don't see how their response would have been different if you had asked negatively.
Maybe if you said "You don't have this, right?" the clerk would have said "that's right", but in general, if you ask "do you have" vs. "do you not have" should almost always result in the same apology that unfortunately they don't.
I think there's a misunderstanding somewhere because in Japan "do you have X" and "do you not have X" would elicit the same response in the negative case (something like "I'm sorry, we're out of stock"). There's no reason for the speaker to say "no" either way.
Isn't this just the standard response when the clerk is not sure? Bring you to the relevant section and let you look for yourself.
I've had "guess culture" people stay over. Really, in my mind they don't even need to ask. They're already welcome to take an extra blanket. But they won't even ask, and they certainly wouldn't presume. They are indeed waiting on me to say "oh, if you're warm the fan can be plugged in, and there's some extra blankets in the closet if you want". Though in my mind, I don't need to say that. And if I don't say it they may go very uncomfortable.
I'm most used to giving such reassurances to children, and to give them to adults seems a little infantilizing. But that's my relatively "ask culture" background in action, probably.
Basic comfort items where you're not using up someone's limited resources == no problem.
For example, under extreme stress or illness, a lot of "ask" people will turn into "guess what I want or life hates me" people.
And it's not exactly unheard of for guessers to turn into power-trippers under stress and become over-direct when just a little bit of directness is a better idea.
Sometimes guessers even use this entire us-them concept as a way to subtly preach to askers, but really it's a two-way street. If you've ever lived or worked under an unethical or abusive guesser, you may have developed a very strong sense of the hypocrisy of the "askers are blunt and mean" comparison which often comes out in discussions with guessers.
Fortunately though there is a lot of nuance to work with on both sides in most cases. (And again, dichotomizing this is not great in so many ways)
The 'mi casa es su casa / make yourself at home' concept is perfectly normal and won't cause offense to anyone, surely?
Then, there are levels. If it's just on the edge of being colder than I'd like, I might not say anything because the effort isn't worth it. It's 65 instead of 70, I'll live. But if you ask me tomorrow how was it, I'll tell you, "Slightly cooler than I'm used to, but no problem". And people will make a fuss and say "Well, why didn't you aaaassssk" Because, like I also said, it wasn't a problem.
Rudeness is, of course, a subjective thing. Some people think it's rude to wear shoes indoors, some people think it's rude to make specific gestures that are either OK or meaningless to me.
My wife is an asker. It's a definite challenge at times...
It's just saying they want to take advantage of you if you fall for it. Making such a request means that they are happy to take advantage of you as long as you let them. Is that unethical?
Think of it this way: You own a truly valuable stamp but you don't know its value. Then somebody who knows its value offers to exchange it for their stamp of much lesser value, without telling you what they know about its value.
It may not be unethical, businesses are based on such behavior. Buy low and sell high to make a profit. But when you see such behavior by your friends or neighbors or colleagues, be aware. They are the kind of people who are happy to take advantage of you.
I think askers sometimes feel put off by guessers, because you can't inherently know what the other person thinks is a fair request -- unless you're in a high context environment (which most askers won't be as familiar with). So from their perspective, guessers are doing a bit of insider trading ... only they know what's of value to them. It's frustrating from the askers POV because the counterparty seems less than transparent about their true intentions.
Of course, from the other side of the coin, the asker is ignoring a million cues that are obvious to the guesser but meaningless to the asker who doesn't even know to notice them.
I agree with the other commenters who say that guess culture is exhausting.
"Guess culture" could certainly be exhausting if you over-complicate it like that, but it's not necessary.
In your example, if you have a fixed position of « Let people offer things, don't ask », you’re putting all responsibility on the other person: they have to adapt to your style or they’ll be the bad guy. Even though the other end of the spectrum (« express your desires, don’t make people guess ») is just as self-consistent and valid.
Camping at either end of the spectrum is putting yourself as a victim, it’s using the other person’s brain rather than your own to make the interaction pleasant. As in most things: extremes and inflexibility don’t work with the subtleties of reality
If you want something, ask me. I don't have crippling confidence issues so saying no is not a problem for me.
I'd never point at someone's cake in someone's house and ask for a slice.
Except for a really good friend, but I'd simply point to his cake and tell him I'm going to eat it. He would either say yes or tell me why I couldn't and neither of us would take offence either way.
I've learnt to shoot down inappropriate ask request right away. Lending you money? No, I don't lent out money.
Life pro tip: never tell people you have money.
Great scene and tangentially related to your premise.
Something like this: “I was thinking of seeing New Movie” “Oh, I’ve been wanting to see that” “I’m going Friday after work. You could join me if that sounds good.” “I’d like that!”
It’s not hard. You establish if someone is open to a date and it’s okay to ask if you’re getting the encouragement to do so. If you’re not, you drop it and save both parties the awkwardness of saying no.
"This is a beautiful cake. What's it for? Is there a celebration?"
If you are not offered a slice after that, assume you can't have one.
But really it's not about "Guessing", it's about understanding. It's about community, and relationship, and trust. What this culture really wants is for you to pay attention and understand the people around you, rather than treating everything as a transaction.
I've experienced it in the contexts of narcissism and borderline personality, where the underlying thought is, "I am so obviously the center of the world that anyone with half a brain who's paying a whit of attention should to intuit my needs without my having to speak a word. If I have to speak, you have already failed." And anyone who failed was punished, sometimes intensely.
Ask culture, for me in that context, became about being able to exist as a separate person and express a boundary. I'd much rather put the cards on the table, find out we want completely different, even opposed things, and work from there, than deal with the power imbalance of one person's assumption that anyone who isn't reading their mind is an idiot.
It seems the virtue, as most of the time, is in the mean.
Verbal abuse, childhood bullying, body shaming, cyberbullying, workplace harassment are all abusive and normal and accepted in many cultures.
I don't think we'd have ever come up with money if abuse weren't a common cultural norm. It's pretty much a proxy for "or I'll have my thugs hurt you".
The argument is easy to construct in either direction, but in no case adds anything of value to the conversation.
Too, claiming that abuse is "just a cultural thing" offers both abusers a convenient excuse for their actions, and everyone who isn't abusive but does share traits of whichever culture an undue indictment.
That said, it is important to keep in mind that what's here under discussion is a broad and fairly imprecise description of how varying acculturation can affect interpersonal relationships mostly among people who don't know one another all that well. In that context it's useful; to try to generalize it to every human interaction is not.
[1] https://alexandria.ucsb.edu/lib/ark:/48907/f37d2s7h#:~:text=....
So I think one of the hidden dimensions here are — are you guessing because you are trying to consider the other person, or are you guessing because there is vulnerability to exposing what you really feel?
That's why I'm grateful that the commenter I replied to helped me see the healthier side of this trait!
Likewise ask culture can only be healthy if there is not a power imbalance: is the asked party really free to say no?
The title is catchy but I’m not sure how useful this dichotomy really is.
Instead of saying "can you do x" you can say "i know you're busy so no pressure whatsoever but if you're available can you do me out with x? feel free to say no my feelings won't be hurt"
Yea it's a lot more words but the general gist is you ask with an additional explicit "out" for the other person so they can say no using your pre-provided excuse instead of them having to come up with one. I've found this over communication can be useful for bridging the gap sometimes
Instead of asking 'Would you do this for me? etc.' which I know would cause a mild-natured guesser stress.
When asked directly, they will give in even if they don't like doing what is being asked.
'Asking' in these cases is actually exploitation (if done with prior knowledge).
Simple example, when somebody cuts into a line in a super market, how many people actually speak up? Most of the time I see eye-rolls, angry shrugs but people just move on.
Is checking out one person later going to be better or worse than what will probably be the very mild confrontation of prompting someone to move back in line? Usually, one person's inconvenient action has no meaningful impact on me at all and is quickly forgotten, but I don't know how it might impact the other person, so I wouldn't normally choose that confrontation even though it also wouldn't bother me if it happened. I'm weighing "no impact on either of us" with "no impact on me, but possible negative impact on the other."
Meanwhile you may have just asked me on a long shot.
If the other person is also an asker, it's probably accurate. As an asker myself, I have no trouble saying no when the answer is no. I will generally offer some explanation of the no, and I'll probably also suggest some other way the other person can accomplish what they were asking me about, but saying no just feels like "being honest" to me.
I'm also comfortable with the prospect that I might disappoint people this way. I consider my own disappointment to be my responsibility, and thus also consider other people's disappointment to be theirs, not mine.
I don't know if that's any less true of "guess" culture. In guess culture the one with less power gets punished for guessing wrong instead of asking wrong.
Ah, I see you’ve met my dad.
The difference between normal and pathological behavior in either culture lies in whether people treat others in the same way they would like to be treated themselves.
For example, Is it okay if I bang your wife/gf?
If you think that's a rude question, why? All I'v done is Ask.
By default, I would take your request at face value and have no trouble saying, "No, we're monogamous, but I can't very well blame you for wanting to!"
Of course, the nut of the question is whether its ever possible to be rude with a question. If it's possible to be rude with a statement, I don't really see the difference between questions and statements, at the higest level, though
Similarly, "Can I sleep with your wife" implies that the asker thinks it's a possibility worth inquiring about. So I basically agree with you on a practical level -- most people would not respond well to the underlying assumption. The question is a veiled statement ("I think you might be open to letting me sleep with your wife, so here I am asking"). In that sense, the question and the statement aren't very different, as you noted.
Certainly sometimes I'm wrong. Most people are assholes sometimes (myself included), and some people are assholes most of the time. But I've found my conversations go best when I try not to assume assholery about someone for as long as I possibly can.
In this case, assuming someone's worldview doesn't take monogamy for granted, and that they've also noticed how sexy my partner is, is how I avoid being offended, even if they frame the request in a somewhat crass way.
I can't imagine a context in which someone would bother asking me for permission to rape my partner.
IME this person is always a women dominating her family. Idk why.
It is interesting—I think thoughtful people like the author tend to see the limitations of the habits they’ve grown up with, and the advantages of the ones they are trying to adopt. But of course both tendencies have advantages and disadvantages.
To add on to a GP's example of the northern U.S. being predominantly an ask culture and the southern U.S. being a guess culture, I think the inverse is true for offering things as opposed to asking for them.
Southern hospitality is very much an offer culture. Whether you need or want something, it will be offered. The guess culture aspect of asking flips when it comes to offering. In the south it is widely considered rude to not impulsively offer even when you know you're likely going to get a "no".
However, in the north the reverse is true. Usually you will only be offered something when it is apparent that thing is wanted or needed. It is actually considered something of an imposition to be offered something you don't want or need.
In other words, I don't think you can just cast these cultures as high context and low context, it is more a case of where the culture places contextual importance.
I am not even sure transactions are possible in asking culture, as it looks stateless. Askers just broadcast needs without reference to any past event, such as a favour.
This might be an equivocation, but, funnily enough, you said guessing is about understanding and for people to have an understanding is a way of saying they have a transaction (often implicit). For instance, "I gave him a pass on that, so now we have an understanding that I can do this".
The more diverse the people a guesser interacts with the more dysfunctional, as in not working how they intend, guess behavior becomes. If you need to interact with people who have even somewhat different values guess culture becomes unworkable.
I’ve found this a lot in relationships where partners where a high bar is expected for how well I can to intuit their current state. “If I have to say it, it’s not romantic”, etc.
I think I tend to fall somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. Being able to ask is feels good, giving and getting feedback feels good, but having someone not care about being aware of where I am at (or factoring that in) doesn’t feel good.
This sort of framing highlights the worst case scenario of "guess" culture imo. Where members assume that outsiders to the "guess" culture only need to "pay attention" to pick up on all the right norms and assimilate into the community that they spent decades growing up in (and that everyone ought to, in the first place, because the "guess" culture considers itself the necessary consequence of virtues like trust and caring). Which leads to great offense being taken when people don't adhere.
Using the example from article, the mover would be complaining about everyone who didn't guess that they needed help with moving and how they had given soup to all those people.
I really appreciate ask culture and find it much easier to navigate. It is so much easier to hangout with friends who can just ask for what they want or just say no. I have learned to ask but still find it stressful to say no.
Speaking of no, in my culture, apparently, no means, "ask me again I am just being polite, I will say yes after your ask me 3rd time."
Clearer communication is always better.
You shouldn't feel bad for asking for help when you need it and other people haven't noticed it, and it's good to be mindful of those around you and what they need. A balance of both should be healthy.
I personally like to keep a balance between the two extremes and try to adapt my behavior to who I'm engaging with (you can tell I'm comfortable in an "Attune" culture environment, but I appreciate when people are up front and communicative about their needs, wants, and boundaries). Considering the power differentials at play and the ability for someone to enforce their true boundaries is really important to me, and also having meta conversations to encourage folks to speak up about their needs and boundaries.
In a work context, I will have a meta conversation with someone about their preferred communication style, how they want to receive feedback, how they want to be checked in with, etc. to avoid mismatched communication expectations.
If I go to your house and ask for a glass of water, it’s because I’m thirsty and I know it’s NBD for you to get a glass and put water in it. I’m not expecting to give or get anything else in return, nor am I trying to be rude by insinuating you should have given me a glass of water. The thought process goes:
1. I am thirsty.
2. I don’t think it’s rude to ask for water since it’s effectively free and only requires you to have a clean glass to serve it in.
3. I ask for water.
Community and trust is all well and good, but most of my social circle are transplants from all over the country/world which all have different social mores. There is no common or universal social dance about how to behave when you want something from someone else or how you should be polite when you go hang out with someone in this kind of setting. And if someone does try to fit their specific background culture into such a setting in a way that makes it so they’re offended when I ask for water or a favor, it’s on them.
That’s not say I think Asking is “superior” but just that it’s not transactional so much as it is pragmatic (but potentially impolite) especially in certain situations, like socialization within a highly diverse-background group.
Let's say though that you felt like a beer. Would you ask for one?
To me, it'd feel quite rude to ask for something like that (what if you don't have any, will it make you feel bad? What if you have some but you were saving them for something or they're very expensive?)
But from what I understand of what the author describes as Ask culture, it'd be seen as nbd for me to ask you for a beer and also no big deal for you to refuse it in turn.
“Ask culture” people, in the context of a shared relationship, are just kind of assholes. Ask culture means “I ask for shit without a legitimate understanding that it is an acceptable request”.
(Obviously when you do not share culture or a relationship you must ask. But you should ask questions that let you understand the culture, and observe instead of act. Or, you know… just be an asshole.)
There are advantages to explicit and implicit negotiation. There are situations in which either might be more graceful or necessary.
Most situations are probably best navigated with some degree of implicit negotiation first, paired with a layer of explicit interaction as a check.
> it's not about "Guessing", it's about understanding.
Asking is often a good way to make sure you actually understand.
"Guessing" may be an acceptable substitute to the extent your intuition doesn't have an error term.
If your goal is to get it right, then you need to ask, guessing isn’t good enough.
And it is guessing, because at some point it requires mind reading to accommodate. Again, most askers still understand, they are just sane enough to understand that mind reading is impossible.
People guess and assume wrongly all the time despite their best intentions. It's not transactional to ask on a long shot - at least it doesn't have to be. Obviously don't be annoying, don't ask people for what you know will put them out or make them feel awkward. But in absence of signal - send your signal and let it play out.
But that may be due in part to where I learned the phrasing.
Does anyone know where the phrasing comes from? I know where I first saw it and it was my impression that was the "birth" of the phrase, but I don't actually know if that's true or not.
Being aware of other people's needs matters. Expressing your own needs matters. Both are important skills, and if you completely refuse responsibility for one of them you're going to be in for a hard time.
The "culture" of making truly unreasonable requests of others is, by my reading, culture-less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c...
"Guess" culture would correspond to high context culture. You need to have a lot of shared context -- or be able to read a lot of clues to the context -- to infer what was really meant as a means to be adequately polite.
"Ask" culture would correspond to low context culture. It is often characterized as "rude" by outsiders but is also pro-diversity, such as New York City and American military culture.
Some people can navigate either type of culture, assuming they know what type of culture they are dealing with. Others assume the world works one way or the other and default to whichever one they grew up with, most likely.
E.g.: the locals would make a token offer to the soldiers, expecting them to politely refuse.
The Americans would take that offer at face value and accept, to the surprise of the locals.
But this article paints high-context as bad and low-context as good, when they're really just different (and opposite ends of a spectrum, not a black or white one or another).
You're probably thinking "but implicit communication is just as effective!" but it definitely isn't. It's all about hints and guessing motivations which is inevitably unreliable.
I can't think of any company that doesn't have some low-context interfaces. It can be expensive for top executives to constantly address every question with "clear and effective communication." Some people make it look easy, but it's hard!
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...
I was critiquing the parent and indirectly asking for an example of a firm that has *ONLY* "high context." Things become very abstract with unwritten rules as you move up the org chart.
But the fact that contexting has not been empirically validated should not necessarily be construed as a failure of the theory. ... Nonetheless, the contexting model simply cannot be described as an empirically validated model.
However, on a practical level, people throw this around as if it were empirically supported (which doesn't seem to be the case). If there have been hundreds of studies failing to make the connection, I won't take the bet that it will eventually get validated.
On a meta-level, that's also a weird quote.
> But the fact that contexting has not been empirically validated should not necessarily be construed as a failure of the theory
Pick any theory. If you can't validate it, and plenty of people have tried to validate it, then that's a failure of the theory, right?
Definitely not. There are a ton of theories that are very difficult to validate because you simply can't run the experiment due to practical or ethical reasons. That doesn't mean they are invalid.
For example my theory that UBI is unworkable. Basically impossible to prove because it's just too expensive to ever run a real UBI experiment.
Or the theory that eugenics would decrease genetic illnesses. Good luck testing that!
Even a lot of basic and fairly self evident stuff is difficult to actually prove when it involves people. Are the gender biases of children (toy preferences etc) innate? They definitely are but it's very difficult to actually test.
But they HAVE run high/low context experiments.
> For example my theory that UBI is unworkable. Basically impossible to prove because it's just too expensive to ever run a real UBI experiment.
Are you referring to Universal Basic Income? If so, countless experiments have been run. [0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots#...
Sure, but those experiments are fundamentally flawed because they are of such limited duration, and because they only apply to a small portion of society.
Obviously people's behaviour is going to be different if they know they can't abandon their careers, and the economy is obviously not going to be affected at all by these trials but it definitely would by actual UBI!
To do a proper test you'd need an entire country to try UBI for at least one lifetime. Good luck with that.
The link had explicit examples of universal experiments that met the parent's goalpost criteria (i.e. "entire country"). See the nationwide program in Iran[0].
If you're not satisfied, then you need to provide your criteria and references to support your argument.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots#...
My link provided examples that did that! See the Iran study [0]!
I deleted the rest of my comment elaborating on your fallacies because it's clear that you're acting in bad faith, and there's no point.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_pilots#...
For example, in educated coastal-liberal California asking for favors or for hospitality (eg can I get a glass of water) is low context but certain topics like religion or most politically controversial things are generally off limits. Conversely in the South, hospitality has a decent number of high context expectations, but religion or political discussion are more acceptable for discussion. And of course every culture has common cultural/historical references that are implicitly known and sometimes implicitly referenced without explicitly making the reference or expanding on all the details.
That’s why I think a lot of cultures see themselves as low context compared to others, except perhaps the most pathologically high context ones (Japan), because we all have blind spots about where we’re actually high context.
If you were doing something like sales, where both all your salesmen and clients were locals with the same social expectations on how to communicate implicitly, there wouldn’t be any direct benefits to trying to communicate explicitly, and doing so may come across as rude or offensive.
The author is from a "guess" culture trying to operate in an "ask" culture world. She's adapting, but not because any particular culture is better than the other, but because "when in Rome, do as the Romans do".
You call up your best friend and say, "Hey, I'm moving on Saturday, come over and help me." Your friend either says "Sure, I'd love to" or "Sorry, got a hot date, catch you at your housewarming party."
Ironically, Ask culture is usually used in transactional settings where you barely know someone, Guess culture is usually used in smaller community settings where you have a lot of personal context, but Tell culture (which is a level beyond Ask in directness) is usually used in intimate settings where you have a strong bond with someone - either family or very close friends. At that level of intimacy, it's expected that someone can say no to a direct request without hurting the relationship. It's the same reason close friends frequently make fun of each other or horse around in mock physical combat - it demonstrates that your relationship is strong enough that insult doesn't hurt it.
Which is why well run organizations do not engage in hazing. While organizations that do it tend to be the ones engaged in bullying in general - whether internal or external.
If the friend should only say yes if they really want to, then that's ask culture.
If the friend should feel obligated to say yes, then that's guess culture.
The only difference here is that the request is worded differently (as a statement rather than as a question), which is simply close friends adopting their own language conventions, a slightly-related but independent concept.
For further reading, here's the blog post that named the concept: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rEBXN3x6kXgD4pLxs/tell-cultu...
And further discussion within the same community: https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/against-tell-...
There were a bunch of tumblr posts on this as well which are more work than it's worth to go recover.
I do agree that the Guess label is a little off. That's a bit like saying a quarterback is only "guessing" that their receiver will break off their option route where they are expecting. It's really only Guess culture to an outsider who doesn't know the expectations (as you see when a new WR keeps getting the read wrong, leading to turnovers).
And as others have said, everything is on a continuum. There are very few "ask" cultures where you can just ask someone if you can sleep with their wife and expect no negative repercussions at all. And I doubt that you can get a "no" from someone 25 requests in a row and have neither party question the relationship a little bit.
And there's some unspoken aspects to every request; if you ask someone if you can grab some food from the fridge and they say yes, even in an ask culture they probably have some assumption of how much food you are reasonably going to take. If they come back to an empty fridge, you won't assuage their anger by saying "well I asked and you said yes."
In a new situation, I try to interpret requests like an Asker and make requests like a Guesser (without being offended if I get a no), until there's some shared understanding. That's taken a lot of work, since I'm naturally a Guesser through-and-through.
“Thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people - ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signalling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you'll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise you'll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at (pace Moomin fans) the Cluelessness of Everyone.”
The more diverse the people a guesser interacts with the more dysfunctional, as in not working how they intend, guess behavior becomes. If you need to interact with people who have even somewhat different values guess culture becomes unworkable.
They will say "yes" to everything, no matter what, and then never ever ask a followup question.
For example, if assigned a task that I know they cannot possibly complete (i.e.: due to a lack of access), they'll say "yes" and then... I won't hear from them again.
A week later, the conversation will go like this:
"Have you started on the task?"
"Yes."
"How? I haven't seen you log in to the source control system, and thinking about it, I don't think you have access."
"Yes."
"So, do you have access?"
"Yes."
"How? Can you check out the source code successfully?"
"Yes."
"Can you show me what you've done."
"Umm... yes."
"That's an empty folder!"
"Yes, I don't have access, so this is all I can do."
Also, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that doesn’t sound like an “ask” culture- that sounds like a “yes-man” situation.
What have you done?
What is your next step?
A lot of people will hear "why" as accusatory: "why did you do it this way?!" becomes a question about culpability rather than causality; "what" is (apparently) what you want to use: "what led you to make these choices?"
(it's probably a moving target tho, although one that moves slowly)
An interesting thought exercise is when Ask people somehow happen to live in a Guess culture. It's like all the guess culture members are working with their own cryptography that's not allowed to the newcomer, and when the new person asks for the code, no one can clearly give the code to the newcomer. The code has to be learned by spending enough time with the community members.
Language is one such barrier -- unless you learn it at an early age, it is sometimes almost impossible to master the intricacies of a language. There are also other numerous cultural aspects that take time and effort to learn, which helps the coherence and integrity of the "guess" culture members.
But even in those Guess cultures, there are also people with curiosity and willingness to learn new cultures, which could move the cultures toward the Ask cultures. That's at least what I learned while I studied the 19th and 20th century history of Korea and Japan. They are not always successful in making changes and progresses within the society, but when they do or when the changes come, they are those thriving, by asking questions about the new world and the new norms. IMO this curiosity is the catalyst for the change from a more Guess culture toward a more Ask culture.
On the other hand, there's fear, the fear of the newcomers. IMO that's what drives the Guess culture, and also another powerful motivation that moves a culture toward more "Guess" culture. In US or European politics, you see all these nationalistic movements. As one of the comments said, even in US, the Guess culture is more predominant in the locations where the fear against other ethnic groups is dominant. It's just the correlations, but IMO there's some feedback loop between the fear and the Guess cultures.
In the end, it's easy to see why the Ask cultures would become more dominant: Ask cultures can easily talk to each other and learn from each other, while Guess cultures are exclusive even among themselves, which make them more difficult to learn from others.
It goes deep too. All the way down to the fear of hearing a ‘no’ answer. So it’s self reinforcing all the way down.
Their example of "ask culture" involves stoking resentment by making unreasonable requests. This can be avoided by practicing a little empathy. Ask questions, provide some basic context, and offer an escape hatch: "What are you busy with? I need X because Y. It's fine if you can't, I can also get it from Z".
Their example of "guess culture" sounds like mind-reading and ambiguous non-verbal signaling, maybe even to the point of being passive aggressive. Again, use empathy. Volunteer information that others might want to know. Be genuinely curious, ask questions. Communicate.
Make sure both parties know enough to make informed decisions.
I'm not sure this joke is appropriate: Man and wife sleep in separate beds, the wife says. A friend asks, so how do you ... you know? If he wants to, he whistles. And if you want to? Well, I go over and ask if he whistled.
The escape hatch could also just be a mere formality， especially when there is a difference in power dynamics or social rank. This is amplified in cultures where, for example, the opinions and needs of elders rank higher.
Yet, I think it's useful for awareness.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...
However, when someone asks me something I don't want to do, I just say no, and don't think much more about it.
I want to push back on this, but since I was raised in the US, I don't feel like I have a leg to stand on. Perhaps it's more ask culture than the Japanese, but I still feel like it's very heavily on the Guess side.
This all resonates with me, though, because I haven't grown up saying "no". My parents didn't ask much of me, but it didn't cross my mind to say no to any request.
I have an in-law who feels extremely free to ask for unreasonable things, and it's extremely hard to manage.
I think the comments in this piece about how the business world works are the most insightful to me here. A good read.
New Englanders are famously less-chatty, but also quite direct, so I’m not sure exactly how to map it to this ask/guess thing. I think specifically the Yankee subculture tends toward guess.
* Region
* Socioeconomic status
* Invidual psychology
The strongest "ask culture" people I've seen are poor people with good self esteem who grew up in historically poor areas like the South and stayed there. These people have a natural sense of "we have to take care of each other", a long-term commitment to their community, and an automatic understanding that they have helped many others before and thus deserve help in return.
The strongest "guess culture" people I've seen are wealthy insecure people that have moved around a bunch. They are financially secure enough to not need help most of the time, and expect others to also take care of themselves. They don't have the kind of long-term roots that make reciprocity feel natural. At the same time, they do want connection and community, so they work hard to try to understand the implicit needs and desires of the other guess culture people around them so that they can be helpful.
I'm definitely very far onto the guess culture side, but I know that I would be healthier if I could be more ask culture.
Individual psychology definitely plays a huge role with me personally being on the far side of guess culture. I have pretty extreme social anxiety and the idea of asking someone for something fills me with dread every single time. Not because it shows weakness (I think), but because I don't want to impose on others. Asking someone I don't know for something is almost impossible. I can barely do it in a context where it's expected, like customer service.
I'm not wealthy, but I have moved around a bunch, especially as a child. I'd absolutely help out anyone who asked for it, but also try anticipate the needs of others.
(Or maybe it's function of who I work with from each continent? I work with a range of seniority levels in the US, but the European engineers I get to work with tend to be on the more senior side, and I imagine western business experience and ask-culture-adeptness are corollated).
Not sure what goes on in other countries, but it's dealers choice here in the States imo.
> [Because of something something Asian culture] My parents rarely had to make explicit asks of me,
It baffles me how anyone with any kind of awareness could write this.
One of the most valuable skills I've learned in grad school is how to get good at using all three: guess, ask, and "do" culture. You really need all three in an environment like that to navigate complex admin tasks, raise money, pursue ideas, and be a normal, friendly, empathetic person to work and collaborate with.
Yeah, a more intuitive name would be "Just Ask" vs "Guess If You Can Ask" which emphasizes the difference: Someone from a Just Ask culture wouldn't understand having to guess if you can ask someone something.
As time went by, I found it was much easier to adapt to the ask culture. I also found consistency matters more than the styles. When I consistently ask with good intention, people would not take offense.
This was nearly a deal-breaking problem early in my relationship with my wife. I am "ask", she is "guess". We just want to figure out what we're going to order for dinner, why on earth is this turning into a fight?
What we came up with was a simple system.
Person A presents three options, all of which they like. Person B picks from those three options. If they don't like any of the three, swap roles, and person B presents three options. If person A doesn't like any of those three options, give up and just go get dinner separately (this has never actually happened, yet).
Everyone is getting their preference in some way. No one has to guess what the other person wants. Fights are avoided.
I play a similar game with my wife. Whenever we have a hard time choosing something, I present 5+ options, and we take turns eliminating one option until only one is left.
In some ways its sort of more resillient, like if one person has a critical failure or can't be present, others can help, and because many people know you, it is a web that can witstand the loss of one or several members. You don't have to use your own limited mental capacity to make decisions (especially if you're struggling or need help) and you get warm feeling of connection from helping others.
The guess way of choosing whats for dinner would be if you're feeling good you pick what you know your partner likes. If you're feeling bad or struggling to decide they suggest what you like. Of course, this relies on you actually knowing what they like - remembering times they enjoyed something, knowing what to fall back on when they are vulnerable or struggling. You know the things they like from observing them intently, their body language, their tone of voice, etc when you eat. They will find it difficult to express whether they like something explicitly unless they really hate or love it.
Some may find it exhausting having to intently observe but for the people I know in this sort of culture it's instictive, like you literally couldn't not do that even if you tried.
Guess culture sounds exhausting because it is. I can't count the number of times I've had a resentment towards someone for something they inadvertently did without even realizing. And the converse is just as annoying, when someone is upset at you and you have to play 20 questions to figure it out.
I think if you're high in agreeableness saying no to someone can be hard, which is where guess culture comes from IMO; but on the other hand, that's just a super important life skill even if you are highly agreeable.
However, at work, I am definitely an "ask" person. I'm in engineer that has spent a lot of time with sales people. "Make them say no" is a mantra I use at work. It's more forward, more aggressive, and American corporate culture, often necessary.
Service people have to cater to the lowest common denominator. Serving low-self-esteem culture just means doing the same kind of customer service one would do anyway: be clear, assure and reassure, be positive, listen closely, be understanding, consistent, etc.
Serving a narcissist is a completely different category: predict bad faith misinterpretations of your positive statements and sensible responses to them, low-key reject 2nd and 3rd attempts at bad faith misinterpretations, ignore ad hominem attacks, intuit whether their friends acknowledge the narcissism, know when to (quickly) turn them over to a manager, etc.
Consequently, some members of the "ask" group preface everything they ask with politeness or some other obvious tell to distinguish themselves. But the rest are jerks, IMO. They want to pretend that randomly requesting a free desert at an Applebee's is just a case of, "If you don't ask you won't know." But at the moment of asking, the server has to assume they are a narcissist and up their stress level accordingly. At least in America, there's no way you can be adult age without having witnessed narcissists making rando requests so that they can take out their stress/anger on service people. Given that knowledge, it's not a matter of culture-- it's just plain stubbornness and selfishness.
My friends who are immigrants (or children of immigrants) from Hong Kong, Taiwan, India are all 'askers', whereas those of us with families who've been here 2+ generations are 'guessers'.
Is Canada a 'guess' culture more than America?
Another funny thing from the article - "A squeaky wheel gets the grease" - I've always understood that to be true, but shameful. Like yes, you can put up a fuss and often get what you want, but only by being "squeaky" - annoying, brash, offputting.
More like "make demands without considering the other person at all vs. think for a second about not imposing yourself on other people unnecessarily."
But mostly this article is about the virtues of being a clear communicator and having decent interpersonal skills, which is neither an "ask" nor a "guess" thing.
From my experience, I would assume the one not considering the other person is the one in guess culture, assuming the other person can and ought to read their mind, and the one trying not to impose is the one who actually asks the other person for their opinion or consent, but I can equally see it the other way around, and think the opposite might actually be how you meant it.
I ask all the time! And I'm totally comfortable with "no." But I try to consider the other person first because I think making unreasonable requests repeatedly, which is the subtext of their description of an "asker," blows social capital and just bugs people.
It's not like people in ask cultures just go around asking random strangers to hand over all their money...
Guess also assumes a very similar shared context and understanding. This leads to xenophobia, because "those foreigners" seem so rude simply because they "guess" with a different contexts. Again, asking is superior.
Guess culture here also functions as a test of love or loyalty. They are nice, so they'll say "nah, you don't have to see grandma, it's a long drive..." but in their heart they hope you will make the effort because you love your grandma. If they tell you to see your grandma, your visit in their view (and your perception too) won't have quite the same meaning. There is suspicion you saw her because you were told, not because you really wanted to.
But this is missing an important part of the ask-aspects: You can put needs and issues onto peoples radar.
Like, someone recently just asked me if I have a kiln to sell. I very much don't have a kiln I don't need to sell and I had a good laugh about the request. But interestingly, someone else I know apparently knows how to setup kilns and he'd help if there was a kiln to sell and he's now talking to the other dude about kilns.
This is very much how things work in rural nothern germany or northern germany overall. You just ask around if you need something, people learn what you need, and suddenly someone is like "Yo, this friend of a brother of the owner of a goat my sister owns has this thing and you mentioned you could need it three years ago and he wants to get rid of it. Could he come over tomorrow?"
At the same time, without a critical examination of the idea, these things have a nasty habit of becoming the next pseudoscience, like Myers-Briggs, learning styles, growth mindset, and the like.
Identifying yourself or someone else as an Asker vs. Guesser to explain behavior is about as helpful as identifying yourself as a Sagittarius or Capricorn. Fun to think about occasionally, but no basis in fact.
Still. Important realization, and definitely something I've failed at before.
- Hey can you do $WHATEVER for me? - Sure! - Really? Can you really do this for me? - Well, actually I'm busy tonight so I can't do it, sorry
Not answering "sure" the first time? Rude. Not asking for confirmation? Rude.
Also, most families have enough common background to make "guess" culture work, so a lot of adolescents and young adults are more accustomed to "guess" culture, but once they move out into the world to deal more with people that have very different backgrounds, they will need to become more comfortable with "ask" culture.
You know, you get a innocent text from a friend: Any plans this weekend? No other context around the question...
Answer no and you might miss out on a party invitation. Answer yes and they implicitly assume that you are free to help their cousins friends uncle to move boxes whole day, often phrased with yes as the only viable answer.
It’s not that I wouldn’t like to help a good friend in need, but it’s not like “no plans” means I’m totally free of their disposal either, my weekend is my weekend. Stop beating around the bush, give the context up front, allow a way out of the question that doesn’t become super awkward for both parties.
Friendly people would accept requests for favors where both costs and values are favorable, but they do not want to be taken advantage to accept low value / high cost requests, and also do not want to be rude to refuse high value / low cost requests.
In 'ask' culture, the act of asking only implies low value of the favor, so people are free to ask and free to refuse.
In 'guess' culture, the act of asking implies high value of the favor, so people have high bar for asking and high bar for refusing.
In both situations, there are ways to express higher or lower implied value of the favor (e.g., one can 'beg' instead of 'ask' to imply higher value, or one can 'express interest' instead of 'ask' to express lower value).
One could say that 'ask' / 'guess' is unfortunately named and it would be better to call it 'low ask' / 'high ask'.
Also, i am not sure if it is really a cultural/social thing, or personal/psychological thing, perhaps it is both.
From this point of view, it seems fair that such cost should pay the side initiating the communication.
Also the further south you go the more guess culture it will get. The more north you go people will be more friendly but also tell you what they think. As a general rule of thumb.
In the workplace too, becuase asking is too direct sometimes commands are phrased as soft questions.
"Should this be here?" means "I have figured out what is wrong and this clearly shouldn't be here, I will not approve your PR until you change this"
This irritates me, but I've only found on extreme ends of the guessing spectrum.
Generally I find guessing culture more preferable. It places the burden of "is it OK to ask this?" on the asker which is as it should be. Otherwise you're putting the burden of saying no on the requestee, and also gives the requestee the task of saying no nicely.
However if your at the table around a strangers house and you feel that you have to wait for the host to offer you ketchup. Well that's just manners gone stupid, thats obviously an OK thing to ask, it's on the flipping table!
What counts as Western society, California to Greece?
https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet...
(To me the most interesting thing about the concept is that you can immediately tell from people's reaction to it which category they personally fall into.)
It reveals things about other people, but also about oneself. For example, I always assumed that people were just afraid to ask and answer questions honestly; until I read that post, I was not aware that there was any cultural choice being made. And so I learned that, partly through upbringing and partly through choice, I was an Asker; but that people who were Guessers were operating on an equally sound footing to mine, just from very different assumptions.
The original post and discussion was an eye-opener for me; before that I never understood why some people would say "yes" to a request but then act put upon anyway, or would act vaguely like they wanted something but never actually come out and say so. I just thought they expected everyone to be a mind-reader.
Once I understood they were basing things on the premise that putting someone in a position of having to say "no" was rude, it all made a lot more sense, and I was able to adjust my own behavior and expectations to better fit theirs.
Separately, I once read a book that suggested to guess people that it was good to ask because their is a benefit to the giver. In other words, if you ask someone to help you move, most of the time they'll feel good about themselves for helping you. If you don't ask then you're not giving them the opportunity to feel good about helping. That doesn't mean I ask as much as I probably should but it did at least make me some small percentage more likely to be okay with asking.
At work, ask culture puts higher burden on managers. Especially when requests cross the line into unreasonable territory, and the manager has to study the problem with objectivity, and politely articulate why the request cannot be granted.
Example: request for time off overlaps with important deliverables due by the requester. In guess culture, the requester studies their schedule and does not make a request if there's a conflict. In ask culture, the requester asks anyway and if the manager approves, they have now entangled the manager into what could be a bad business decision.
At some level, it doesn't actually matter if these labels are correct or generalize a culture or anything else. It does matter if people genuinely feel the things described and if other people are genuinely unaware of those feelings.
We are each inherently limited in our perspective by being an individual. It's helpful to be exposed to other ways of thinking, and it's helpful to have ways of conceptualizing differences in thinking for future reference.
"Ask/guess" doesn't have to be *true*, it just has to be useful as a heuristic.
It seems like it should be a communication nightmare. Humans are already predisposed to confuse reality with their own stories about reality, we shouldn't encourage doing that with other people and their thoughts. It's not real. The only way to know is to ask.
And when you get to the very bottom of it, withholding communication from someone because of how you think they might react is just a way of controlling them and their experience of life in a small way.
Learning how to make simple requirements and decline request simply was liberating.
Ever since reading about this I've looked at relationships I have and have tried to work out what culture the other person preferred or was using, and often had direct conversations both explaining the concepts and talking about the ramifications of one form of interaction over the other.
Some folks are uncomfortable asking for things and lean into guess culture, others are really explicit about if they didn't ask about it they don't care. I only wish I had understood these concepts when I started managing engineers!
It feels especially bad when I think somebody may be trying to take advantage of me being a nice person.
Confidence men - isn't that what this is all about? Somebody wanting to gain your confidence (that they will somehow pay yo8u back) so then they can take advantage of you?
One example is a salesman at a store like Best Buy who continues to push extended warranties after you say no. (I often resort to losing my temper and saying "If you say another word about the extended warranty, I am going to walk out of the store!")
Another example is an adult that I carpooled with to a political rally. When I told him I telecommuted, he asked me to help him on the campaign during the day. The request was insulting because he assumed that I sat around and did nothing from most of the day.
Later the adult asked me to take a day off of work to fix his computer. At first I pointed out that that was a rude request to make, but he continued to push on me to fix his computer. A day or two later he emailed me screenshots from his computer without me asking for them.
(I should point out that if he had merely asked, "Hey could you look at my computer and help me with something," I probably would have found the time to visit him and help him.)
What's frustrating is that sometimes I hit the pattern of saying "no," and then the salesperson ignores my response and continues to sell the warranty.
At that point I will usually raise my voice and say something like "I said no," as if I was talking to a nagging teenager. Then the clerk will take an insulted tone and say something like, "I'm just doing my job."
So what do you do in those situations??
e.g. "Look, I recognize that it's your job to try to sell me a warranty, but there's absolutely no chance that I'm going to buy a warranty, so let's focus on the product."
If that doesn't work, then you go straight at their incentives - "Listen, like I said, I'm not going to buy a warranty, and this is becoming distracting. If we can't drop the warranty talk, I'm going to guy buy from somewhere else." They want to sell the warranty, but if they know that's not possible then their next incentive is not to have to explain to their boss why they had a customer who spent a significant amount of time with them but didn't close.
Man, people are so bad at communicating.
I have found that a lot of communication from americans includes hidden unsaid statements, which are frequently expected by the speaker to be automatically inferred by the listener.
Alternately, plain speaking is heard by the american listener to imply things that may not be intended at all.
It's somewhat baffling to me, so much so that I wrote a whole article about it.
I don't mean to say anything about you, but, as a saying with a different word in it goes, if you meet one person who's bad at communicating, then they're bad at communicating; but if everyone you meet is bad at communicating ….
(I also wish people would communicate more clearly, but I have to admit that what I really want is that people would communicate in the way that's easy for me—I am not operating from some absolute, logical standard. I also may be coming from an unusual perspective because, as an academic, a lot of my colleagues were not born in the US, so that cultural backgrounds, and also the sometime preference in the sciences for speaking that is direct to the point of abruptness, may mean that I don't see the worst of what you do.)
Someone told him whenever someone makes a point, he seems to react to a very specific, narrow, and marginal interpretation of that point. And he reacted to a very specific, narrow, and marginal interpretation of that point.
> Excuse me, ma’am. It seems to me that you’re in a hurry. I don’t know how long this line will take, however, I am reasonably certain that it will take the same amount of time for you to reach the head of it whether you stand 5, 1, or zero meters away from my bag, so I must request that you please stop touching it.
This does seem a bit aggro though, a friendlier way could've been to assume that she wasn't aware of the bumping and so wasn't doing it on purpose. In the US if there's a gap in a line and folks aren't closing it, that itself can be seen as rude and not paying attention (whether it makes sense or not is another matter). My personal guess is it comes from being stopped at green lights where cars in front stay parked and then you end up catching the red.
Simply saying "please stop touching my luggage" is what I would expect. Adding any reasoning or explanation increases the emotional stakes and gives more places for people to infer subtext.
I appreciate the directness of simply backing your request with clear assertions as to why it is reasonable. Despite this, it does feel a bit odd to hear.
Life's too short to guess. I'd rather everyone be direct, say what they want.
If it offends someone, well, sorry but too bad I guess.
If someone really behaved according to all the "Ask culture expectations," they would be selfish, and if someone really behaved according to all the "Guess culture expectations," they would be insufferable. Yes, various people are a little more to one side or the other, but most of the time something in between is best, along these lines:
• Yes means yes, no means no (to both the asker and answerer).
• Ask for what you need, but with an awareness of what you're asking the other person to give up.
• Take responsibility for what you say (e.g. don't actively lie about your expectations, don't offer when you aren't ready to follow through).
• Show appreciation.
Being aware of other people's needs matters. Communicating your own needs matters. Both are important skills, and if you completely lack one of them (and blame the other person for it!) you're going to be in for a hard time.
My relationships that work well have a very strong unstated premise of turn-taking. If my friend paid for lunch last time, of course I'm getting it this time, and vice-versa--to me that's just obvious. If I stay at someone's house while traveling, it goes without saying that I will host them at my house (or return the favor in some other way of equivalent value) before imposing on them again.
So instead of directly asking in those cases, you could instead mention your need, without directly asking. "The vet bill's going to be $5k and I have no idea where we're going to come up with it." "Ugh, the flight gets in in the middle of the night; going to have to see if I can get a cab or something at 4am." You give them a chance to _offer_ help, but don't create an expectation.
No matter how deep your guess cultural assumptions may run, please help any autistic people in your life out and, for their sake, just ask for what you want. They will interpret your request exactly at face value and answer you clearly.
I have three kids, and my oldest child asks for things constantly. She's gotten a little better, but often requires that I repeat the phrase "don't ask for anything" every 2 to 3 minutes when we are in a situation where asking for things is inappropriate.
My younger kids are a lot more reasonable and don't constantly ask for things, even though my oldest would constantly ask for things when she was their age.
It's clearly a personality thing. (If you have ever read any of the pigeon books by Mo Williams, my child often acts like the pigeon.)
For example, with this one particular child, if I am making dinner and have my hands full, she will keep asking for a snack, even though I will repeat that I am making dinner and there are no snacks until dinner is ready.
So how would you deal with this behavior?
I personally operate mostly in the ask culture. But if I meet you, I don't know if you're in the ask or the guess culture. And it seems to me that I kind of have to operate in the mode of the guess culture in order to find out which you are.
Me: if I need help I will ask for help. I do NOT want you to offer help unless I ask and I especially do NOT want you to just join in and help if it looks like I'm struggling. I feel entitled to the satisfaction of having done it myself, if I can.
Her: if she needs help she won't ask for it but hopes her frustration is apparent and help will come. Finds it very uncomfortable to watch people struggling and feels compelled to offer help or just join in and help. Feels annoyed if help doesn't come when she needs it.
As you can imagine this caused quite a bit of conflict between us, at least until I understood what was going on.
But I think in every other respect I'm a guesser.
There are people who value getting the right gifts, tell others verbally what they are interested in, and those people then buy those gifts. There is very little mindreading and magic, but the gifts almost assuredly are useful and loved.
There are people who value the magic of Christmas gifting. Telling others what to buy is nonsense because the point isn't the gifts themselves but the act of gifting. The joy is in seeing who got you a gift and what the gift says of your relationship dynamic.
Neither of these are wrong ways to approach Christmas, but you're kind of a jerk if you think your vision of Christmas is the only way.
Many people choose to consciously engage in toxic or illegal behaviors on the premise that, if the "victim" wants it to stop, it has to signify clearly its desire. Until then, they are free to continue whatever they choose to do.
I think this behavior is very far from genuinely guessing someone's attitude or wishes without consciously putting the same person into discomfort, distress or suffering.
As such, I wouldn't call this "asking vs. guessing" but rather "asking vs. forcing others".
An extreme example being: the interactions between two foreign cultures are (or at least ought to be) almost entirely ask-based, as they have no prior understanding of how the reciprocal cultures work.
I've seen that in internet conversations. Where a simple question would do, a prolonged process of guessing, assuming and even accusing is embarked upon. Because none of the participants wants to submit, to lose.
It's a dom/sub culture thing. USA culture is such a culture. Look at popular fiction. It's invariably concerning the dominance of rightness over wrongness.
So reality itself stands upon the form of the dom/sub relationship in a way.
It's pretty deep.
Another thing that you can do, if you're in a position of some leadership (doesn't have to be management), is recognize others who are maybe not asking as much as they should given the ambient culture, and help them thrive by putting them forward when appropriate. Some of these folks don't just feel underappreciated, they are also underutilized.
I once was horribly burned by an "ask" person I dated who politely, but expectantly asked for the moon on a regular basis.
There was a significant cultural bias in play for sure. I felt somewhat steamrolled at the time. It did not work out. I am sure it was about more than different cultures, at the end of the day.
The article discussed there sort of parallels this dichotomy, but applies it to conversational styles.
This made me think about a small aspect of Brazilian culture. If someone is selling something expensive like a house or a car, they will probably get mad at you for offering to pay a value much lower (or maybe not even that much lower) than what was advertised.
Guess/High Context is Allstic/Neurotypical.
Ask/Low Context is Autistic/Neuroatypical.
Anyone on the spectrum feels that Guess culture is cruel and unnecessarily complex. And they're right. (i'm only moderately on the spectrum, but strongly prefer Ask culture)
I come from a rural place in Europe, guess culture was the norm.
Now, I'm on a different country altogether, and it has been difficult perceiving the world around me... But this makes sense, it somehow clears my mind.
Really, thanks.
That way the discussion never ends and we end up somewhere nobody wants to go….
> People say yes to requests that you truly feel good about, say no to ones they don’t
Is this perhaps a typo? I can understand the sentence if I substitute 'you' with 'they'.
you leaning into some particular culture does not make it the way a individual will change. don't make it so complex.
it is more of a context than a rigid self one, i think. Also I think what you are doing is fine unless you want to change it yourself(which you could have realised already by now).
Well, it is nice to have knowledge that there are people of different personalities and it may not be what you are trying to think it could be.
The hard part is knowing when and how to ask your question.
Was no-one else a little queasy seeing a U.S. person talk about the entire continent of Asia - pushing towards 4.8 billion people - as if they were an easily generalisable singular entity?
Seems utterly nuts to me. Perhaps it's related to the feeling U.S. people sometimes seem to have that they aren't just the centre of the world, but actually in some sense literally the whole world. Or something else, I don't know.
First drop hints in hopes the other party will catch on.
If that fails and you really want or still need it - you ask.
Guess Culture is more of a strong value on considering the needs of others. It could be unhealthy: considering the needs of others and neglecting your own, but it could also be courteous consideration ("they just got over being sick, I won't ask them to help me move").
I suppose Guess Culture unhealthiness tends to be more neglecting your own needs and desires (and the your resulting hurt and anger that the other person needs to deal with), while Ask Culture unhealthiness tends more towards lack of consideration (ridiculous asks) or demanding (asks that have a question mark but are not really questions).
Consider the example in the article: "all the family members insisted we don't drive up to visit our grandmother and see the city instead, we did it anyway, everyone was glad we did".
Or the next example: "with guess-culture people isn’t as simple as asking people what they want to eat for dinner, because they will not tell you what they actually want to want to eat for dinner."
This person, imo, deeply does not understand what is happening in these situations. They have a model of other people as "wanting something but not being willing to say it", and then they solve the puzzle of figuring out what it was, and the other person appreciates it. But, IMO, those people didn't strongly want something one way or the other. They're resisting an unhealthy dynamic: that the writer just wants to know what someone else wants for dinner, but doesn't even want something for dinner themselves.
What others are doing by not being willing to explicitly state desires is they're refusing to play this game of telling you what to do. They're doing this because it really doesn't feel good for someone to repeatedly ask you what they should do. The asker degrades themselves by pawning their agency off on someone else, and spending time with them begins to feel like hanging out with a robot: soulless, scripted, perfunctory.
That is: when you ask for permission to visit your grandmother and then do it because people said to, or don't do it because they didn't, you haven't demonstrated respect or kindness or love; you haven't acted human at all. You've just performed a mindless duty. Whereas if you decide to do it yourself, because you chose to, then you've demonstrated something.
People are shirking at telling you what to do because they don't want to be part of an icky transaction where somebody constantly hands away their agency. They don't want you "guess", they want you to stop asking for their permission to exist.
edit: I realized there's more in the article about the workplace and it's wrong too! This is not healthy at work, but not for the reasons the article thinks.
A person who goes around trying to get somebody else to tell them clearly what to do, and never gets that and therefore thinks they're having trouble with "ask culture", is a drain on the organization, because the amount of work that gets done is often proportional to willpower. Or call it "initiative" or something.
If you're leeching off other people's agency to do anything, then you're draining their willpower and not helping much at all. Likely they're totally exhausted of it and don't want to tell you what to do anymore. Whereas if you start injecting willpower and agency into the system the whole organization will pick up and run with whatever you do (or course-correct if it's wrong, etc).
"... But all of the older relatives insisted we did not, suggesting that instead we see the sights in San Diego, that we take the kids to Sea World ..."
I think you're right. Her relatives were hoping she would guess that they didn't want her to bring the kids.
Such a waste of energy to prop up someone's attempt to build a personal brand.
Cite your sources and contribute something new, or just share the more original link.
There are cultural norms in places about courtesy, hospitality, when it's appropriate to ask for certain favors, but that's not what the article is about. It's about telling people no vs making excuses. It's about being afraid to say what's on your mind. There's no culture associated with that, only confidence, competence and bring the arbiter of your own life.
It's pretty simple: don't hit people up for money unless your absolutely have no choice, be good to guests you've invited into your home, and say no to things you don't want to do without making up excuses.