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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.
The "Ask vs Guess" name rhetorically frames it in favor of the Askers. Asking sounds reasonable, guessing does not! 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.
Hmm. I think I've primarily experienced the really dark side of guess culture, so I appreciate your framing of it as a desire for understanding when it's in a healthy context. 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 w…
I don't really care for the "Ask vs. Guess" framing. 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.
> Western society is very much ask culture. 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 reques…
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.
> Western society is very much ask culture. 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 reques…
* 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.
Isn't this just a manifestation of high-context versus low-context cultures? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...
Yes, it's just another name for that. 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 don't really care for the "Ask vs. Guess" framing. 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.
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.