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Ask vs. Guess Culture

jeanhsu.substack.com

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Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#421

Post by trompetenaccoun »

morby wrote: post #306
huijzer wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion. Also my girlfriend and I are both from north Europe and I notice a similar difference. Maybe the difference is mostly > 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…

I generally agree. A lot of contradictory statements and I would only add to that. I feel like people tend to pigeonhole each region in the US, the US itself, and indeed any other country into what “people act like”. There might be a common thread that is statistical but it’s not monolithic in any sense. Micro cultures exist and interplay with the macro culture especially in a networked world.

Well the article we're commenting on claims it's also an East vs West thing, and that Asians are "deeply in guess culture". Which, if you know Mainland China only a little you'll know isn't a thing, because in China it's not uncommon for people to make the most outrageous requests without breaking a sweat. Which in turn is seen as embarrassing or rude by some other Chinese. That may be much less common in Japan, where people are obsessed with etiquette. But then the author should say it's a part of Japanese culture, not Asian culture.

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#422

Post by reg_dunlop »

gpgn wrote: post #420
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…

How does that work in dating? If you are afraid of making people uncomfortable by asking them out, escalating things and putting them in situations where they have to say no to you, you may just end up being single for life.

Not at all related to dating, but this makes me think of the Curb Your Enthusiasm scene where Larry David's mother died while he was in New York on vacation and his father didn't want to "inconvenience" Larry out of respect for her dying wishes: "don't bother Larry".

Great scene and tangentially related to your premise.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#423

Post by yetanotherasian »

It's never as simple as "asians are guess, westerns are ask". If that was actually true there would be no bosses, no company presidents, no politicians, no entrepreneurs in asian countries.

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#424

Post by huijzer »

l0b0 wrote: post #394
huijzer wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion. Also my girlfriend and I are both from north Europe and I notice a similar difference. Maybe the difference is mostly > 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…

This and other comments here resonate a lot. My SO is unlikely to ask for anything if there's even a small chance of getting a negative answer, and I'm basically the opposite. If this difference really is common, wouldn't it explain a large part of the salary and position discrepancies between the sexes? That is, someone who asks for an improvement to their contract once they are 50% sure of getting it versus someone…

But that wouldn’t explain why men generally tend to go hard or die trying whereas women are, if you ask me, more clever on average and collaborate with other people. My current theory it’s related to the dating statistics. Dating is a power law for men, albeit more suppressed when polygamy is banned. A few great men will get all the mates whereas most get none. For women, it’s more equal. So men realize that they must excel or have no mate, which leads to extreme behaviour: sometimes extremely "good" (e.g., founder of S&P company) and sometimes extremely bad (e.g., robbing bank). That would explain why most CEOs are male, but also why most criminals are male.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#425

Post by yetanotherasian »

srazzaque wrote: post #375
throwawaymaths wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get this: in Japanese culture, you are expected to refuse three times .

I've not been to Japan, but heard what seems to be an exception to this rule from a colleague. 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!

Rude seems like a too strong a word for it but it's normal culture to fill someone's cup if it's empty and it's rude to poor for yourself without first filling your friend's cup, and ideally they'll ask for the bottle to fill yours once you've finished filling their's but it's common to just fill your own after filling theirs.

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#426

Post by pjmlp »

One way that these both cultures can go really sideways is in offshoring projects, when critical project stuff isn't being discussed, as both parts lack the understanding of the expectations from the other side.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#427

Post by quelltext »

wccrawford wrote: post #62
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…

While I was studying Japanese, I learned that they go out of their way to make it so the other person doesn't have to refuse with a "no". For instance, they'll ask, "Do you not have X?" instead of "Do you have X?" The person can answer "Yes, we don't have it" or "It's over here". 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…

This is as usual not universal.

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.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#428

Post by greatNespresso »

Had so many feverish discussions with my wife about this, we were always stuck at some point because we approached the relationship to our needs fundamentally differently. This article helped me put words on it, thanks a lot!

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#429

Post by jowdones »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #421
morby wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree. A lot of contradictory statements and I would only add to that. I feel like people tend to pigeonhole each region in the US, the US itself, and indeed any other country into what “people act like”. There might be a common thread that is statistical but it’s not monolithic in any sense. Micro cultures exist and interplay with the macro culture especially in a networked world.

Well the article we're commenting on claims it's also an East vs West thing, and that Asians are "deeply in guess culture". Which, if you know Mainland China only a little you'll know isn't a thing, because in China it's not uncommon for people to make the most outrageous requests without breaking a sweat. Which in turn is seen as embarrassing or rude by some other Chinese. That may be much less common in Japan, wher…

Well in Romanian there's a saying: "Stupid's not the one who asks", implying that the gullible "guess" who gives into the shameless unreasonable request is the sucker. Implying that although "guess" culture is the expected civilized social norm, it's usually it's brazen antagonist that propels your interests forward.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#430

Post by caeruleus »

dizhn wrote: post #400
throwawaymaths wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get this: in Japanese culture, you are expected to refuse three times .

In Iran when you ask a store owner the price of something, the answer is "It's free." Then you have to refuse a few times if it's free and then you can get the price. (Not my personal experience. But I heard the same thing from a few people.)

This is called Taarof and can be at times quite extreme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarof.

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.

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