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Ask vs. Guess Culture

jeanhsu.substack.com

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Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#51

Post by sneak »

> Deciding what to eat for dinner 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. They will say “oh, whatever you want,” or “whatever is easiest.” And when you insist that you really really want to know what they want to eat for dinner, and if it’s too much work, you’ll do something else instead, the response you receive will already be a compromised version of what they want, taking into account the preferences of everyone else in the house, what the kids will eat, and the leftovers in the fridge.

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.

https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#53

Post by protastus »

Very interesting framing for tension I experience as a manager, but never saw formalized.

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#54

Post by mvnuweucxqokii »

I think I default more to guess culture? I certainly don't ask for help much--almost never--but I think that might be because I'm very independent. My personal problem with ask culture is when the relationship becomes very asymmetrical. Some ask culture people that I know will freely make requests all the time. In their minds, I assume, they'll get me back when I ask for it. The problem is that I don't ask for help, so instead I will help them out a dozen times in a row, my frustration building all the time, my opinion of them tending toward "freeloader".

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#55

Post by sneak »

jzb wrote: post #12

"It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you" 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 stil…

All good and meaningful relationships involve give and take, and sometimes saying no, so this reduces to "it's rude to have close human relationships with people" (because close human relationships necessarily involve sometimes saying no).

There is an argument that such a worldview is slightly pathological.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#56

Post by willsmith72 »

I felt this a lot as an Australian living in Germany. It's really refreshing knowing someone will tell you what they honestly want, and takes a while to get used to saying "no". Once you realise it's not offensive to say no in "ask culture", I actually think it's preferable, but I don't think I'll ever be completely comfortable doing the "asking".

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#57

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

throwanem wrote: post #38
smeej wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you're describing is abusive behavior, which is something I would hesitate very strongly to characterize as part of any cultural norm.

Why is that? Don't you think that abuse can become a cultural norm?

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".

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#58

Post by breischl »

mabbo wrote: post #36

> Deciding what to eat for dinner 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 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 fig…

That solution is a bit like the game theory solution of "I cut, you choose". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_choose

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#59

Post by detourdog »

quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

Baltic state heritage and you sound like my kind of guest/host.

To quote Jerad/Donald at Silicon Valley:

“I like when people yell at me, at least I know where I stand”.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#60

Post by sfg »

noahlt wrote: post #2

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.

I've never heard of asking vs guessing culture before and don't know much about them, but, based on the article, I'd say guessing looks more transactional. It uses a shared history and remembers past favours ("I gave him soup, so I can seek to get his van", as the example in the article had it), which is really an implicit transaction without guarantee the other side will meet their end.

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".

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