24 ms·

Ask vs. Guess Culture

• gkoberger 3y ago
  This is one of those things that when I read it the first time years ago, it genuinely changed my life. It made me understand half the population. The way the two types interact is so poignant.
• boobalyboo 3y ago
  [dead]
• noahlt 3y ago
  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.
  • smeej 3y ago
    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 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.
    • MyneOutside 3y ago
      This and when that person is a manager, yikes
    • throwanem 3y ago
      What you're describing is abusive behavior, which is something I would hesitate very strongly to characterize as part of any cultural norm.
      • epylar 3y ago
        I can think of several examples. Verbal abuse, childhood bullying, body shaming, cyberbullying, workplace harassment are all abusive and normal and accepted in many cultures.
      • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        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".
        • throwanem 3y ago
          Better put, I'd say that I would hesitate to characterize a cultural preference for either directness or indirectness as akin to the kind of abuse a narcissist deals out to everyone around them. 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.
      • galangalalgol 3y ago
        It can be more moderate than that. "what is wrong honey?". "Nothing, I'm fine". Which can either mean, no really I'm fine, or if you don't know, you obviously don't care about me, or you know exactly what is wrong and don't pretend otherwise. I've been both parties in that conversation, and over time I have learned that ask culture works better between close friends and family. That doesn't mean I'd consider it abusive though, just a non optimal communication strategy.
  • sircastor 3y ago
    What term would you use to describe it? Respectfully, I think you're projecting an opinion onto it. There's no inherent value in the word "Guess". A "guess" culture isn't without transactional interactions, it's just shifted the transaction to implicit expectations instead of explicit.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • bee_rider 3y ago
    The author mentions a couple times coming from a “guess” culture and adjusting to an “ask” one, so I think they are in some sense in favor of “ask,” at least in the workplace. I mean they are clearly trying to adopt some of the habits. 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.
  • kolanos 3y ago
    I actually think there's an inversion of ask/guess spectrum and it is the offer/guess spectrum. 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.
  • sfg 3y ago
    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".
    • samus 3y ago
      People in "ask" culture can provide context to their request, in effect making it transactional again. That works best if parties are not in a close relationship with each other, else the communication is already more contextual and "guess"-like than with loose acquaintances.
  • solarmist 3y ago
    “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.
  • sh1mmer 3y ago
    I feel like “Ask” vs “Sense” would be a better term. 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.
  • johnnyjeans 3y ago
    Maybe "Inquire vs Infer" is better?
  • blargey 3y ago
    > What this culture really wants is for you to pay attention and understand the people around you 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.
    • xeromal 3y ago
      I think that guess culture has attuned me to knowing when I need to include a quiet person into a conversation or to check in on my neighbor when I notice they seem down. Reading people is an undervalued skill that was honed in my guess culture upbringing.
  • superfrank 3y ago
    I've never heard these terms before, but I've known about this concept for a while and I've always used "implicit" and "explicit" as my descriptors for the two different approaches, which I feel have less negative connotations.
  • amerkhalid 3y ago
    I am from guess culture, it is almost impossible for me to decipher needs of everyone and communicate my needs without asking. Unless those needs are very standard traditional needs like offering water to a guest, giving up seat for an elder etc. And it is not just me it seems everyone seems to misunderstand and everyone complains about others who didn't guess their needs correctly. 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."
  • ubermonkey 3y ago
    That framing is at least as bad as the framing you project on the Ask/Guess split. Clearer communication is always better.
  • moffkalast 3y ago
    I'm not sure if I see it that way, both extremes equally lead to dysfunctional interactions. 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.
  • davideg 3y ago
    I appreciate you calling this out! In my community we started talking about it as "Ask" vs "Attune" culture. On the one hand do you assume everyone will be explicit with their wants, needs, and boundaries? On the other, do you pay attention to who you're engaging with, their general disposition, their communication style preferences, etc? 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.
  • opportune 3y ago
    Asking isn’t necessarily transactional. 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.
    • another-dave 3y ago
      What you've described sounds like the 'Guess culture' side to me — you're anticipating the impact on me & asking for something that you intuit is nbd. 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.
      • haterforhire 3y ago
        The beer example is such a good one because no one really thinks it’s reasonable to ask for a beer without a shared context that beers happen in that particular relationship. “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.)
  • wwweston 3y ago
    "Explicit vs Implicit" is more accurate and value neutral, and doesn't require anyone to load down the explicit side of the equation with generalized aspersions like "treating everything as a transaction." 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.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • mock-possum 3y ago
    I think it’s more guess versus know - if you don’t ask, you can only guess, you can’t know. If you ask, then you know. That’s all there is to it. You can pay all the attention you like and still get it wrong - but if you ask, you can’t get it wrong, because you’ll have been told what’s right. If your goal is to get it right, then you need to ask, guessing isn’t good enough.
  • LinXitoW 3y ago
    But most askers can still implement some level of guessing, and fall back to asking to clear up any misunderstandings. Guesser CANNOT. Asking is superior. 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.
  • xyzelement 3y ago
    I grew up in the guess mode but I disagree with you. 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.
  • DoreenMichele 3y ago
    My impression was that Guess culture was viewed more favorably by most people. Ask culture is often viewed by others as rude, crude and socially unacceptable. 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.
  • zestyping 3y ago
    Exactly. "Asking" is about communicating, and "Guessing" is about understanding. 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.
  • ericls 3y ago
    Trust sounds good but is based not knowing.
  • xbar 3y ago
    I read it this way, too. In fact, I found the whole thing to be an apology for the continued expansion of asking for more than is reasonable among those who refuse to learn concern for others, or worse, social cues in a given culture. The "culture" of making truly unreasonable requests of others is, by my reading, culture-less.
• jacobkg 3y ago
  I remember when I first heard about this concept and found it explained a big difference between my brother and I that I had struggled to articulate (he is an asker and I am a guesser)
  • BurningFrog 3y ago
    Interesting, because you were presumably raised in the same culture?
    • Nifty3929 3y ago
      There is another interesting dichotomy between people who phase questions as statements, and those who don’t?
• stefanpie 3y ago
  Interestingly, I went into this article thinking that "guess culture" would mean something along the lines of guessing what others want or what the right thing to do is, executing it, and revising after the fact based on feedback. Essentially, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." I guess you can call this "do" culture. However, the article talks about guess culture as something else. 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.
  • msla 3y ago
    > Interestingly, I went into this article thinking that "guess culture" would mean something along the lines of guessing what others want or what the right thing to do is, executing it, and revising after the fact based on feedback. Essentially, "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." I guess you can call this "do" culture. However, the article talks about guess culture as something else. 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.
• NeoTar 3y ago
  Isn't this just a manifestation of high-context versus low-context cultures? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_cultures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...
  • jedberg 3y ago
    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).
    • IshKebab 3y ago
      It's definitely bad in a work context where clear and effective communication is important. 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.
      • caminante 3y ago
        These are always fun "pop-sci" discussions, but the wiki says this whole dichotomy has been debunked [0]. 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_cultures#History_of_differing_context_cultures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context...
        • carabiner 3y ago
          I worked at an Indian tech consulting firm. Even though India is considered a high context culture, our working environment felt fully low context with endless meetings trying to get all stakeholders on the same page, clearing out assumptions, nailing down timelines and aligning resources. When I moved to a normal US company it felt like downright mind reading how we got shit done much faster because we did have a much larger shared context. So it's all relative and I bet American culture feels like high context to others, and those guys are astonished we can work without more hashing out than we do.
• quacked 3y ago
  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 blithely ignorant to the needs of guests. 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.
  • rgoulter 3y ago
    "Disputes arising from different communication attitudes in relationships" reminds me of Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand", which was recommended to me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Just_Don%27t_Understand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Just_Don%27t_Understand 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.
  • carabiner 3y ago
    That sounds more like urban vs rural. The southerners I've known (Alabama) are pretty blunt about asking for what they want. Going further with stereotypes, some people say west coast is guess, east is ask.
• Tronno 3y ago
  I disagree with the way these behaviors are portrayed as a cultural dichotomy. To me, the author's examples all fall under ineffective communication. 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.
  • posterboy 3y ago
    One could argue that guessing correctly does minimize the inefficient communication. 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.
  • samus 3y ago
    > 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". 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.
    • GreenWatermelon 3y ago
      In those cases, you're expected to tend to the needs of those elders without them even having to ask.
  • visitect 3y ago
    This makes sense to me. I appreciate when somebody communicates their needs in a straightforward way, but also demonstrates an understanding that I might not be able (or willing) to accommodate them. I try to practice this when asking for help. Be clear, but empathetic. And I don't get angry if folks can't help, and remember that everybody has far more going in their lives than what I can see.
• chasing 3y ago
  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.
  • v3gas 3y ago
    You're clearly a Guess :)
    • cogman10 3y ago
      No I'm a purple personality with IRWNVDEIS+ tendencies.
    • chasing 3y ago
      I consider myself a staunch centrist on the "ask" vs. "guess" scale. :-) 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.
      • skeaker 3y ago
        I think that's a given that needn't be mentioned in the article. The author isn't stupid, and clearly wouldn't advocate for making outlandish or completely unreasonable requests even for the "askers" mindset.
      • aidenn0 3y ago
        Making unreasonable requests repeatedly is a form of harassment not "Ask culture." It's not like people in ask cultures just go around asking random strangers to hand over all their money...
      • LinXitoW 3y ago
        But that's ask culture in the end. Guess people can only guess, whereas ask can always guess, but then fallback to asking. 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.
• rconti 3y ago
  > 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 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.
  • jzb 3y ago
    I think "western society" is way too broad a brush. Within the U.S. there's extremes between ask and guess, IME. (Some of that is breaking down due to mobility... regional differences are much less pronounced these days, I think, especially in cities, since there's so much cross-pollination.)
    • bityard 3y ago
      Yeah, I feel like the point of the article was to recognize that there are two sides to the framework with strong traits on each end, but that most social interactions do (and should) happen somewhere in the middle. The trouble tends to crop up when two people who both away from the center in opposite directions try to interact. (which can happen even in well-established relationships.)
  • bee_rider 3y ago
    We’ve got some regional variation in the US, maybe this could be one thing that varies? 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.
  • munificent 3y ago
    I don't think you can make many country-wide generalizations about this. My experience is that it varies widely by: * 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.
• jzb 3y ago
  "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 still believe this. Let people offer things, don't ask. (With a lot of caveats depending on context...)
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • chromoblob 3y ago
    And miss out a lot...
    • jzb 3y ago
      I can honestly say I don't regret a policy of not asking people for things in general. If somebody wants me to have some of their cake, or whatever, then I'm usually happy to accept. But I can't think of a time when I am like "gee, I missed out by not asking for that thing."
      • ddbb33 3y ago
        The cake could also be asking for a raise, or a discount, really any other any opportunity that’s not as low-stakes as an item of food
  • sneak 3y ago
    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.
    • samus 3y ago
• tonystubblebine 3y ago
  Jean! Cross post this please!
• ajkjk 3y ago
  I strongly feel this article misses the point and ends up at a harmful framing instead. 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).
• AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Very interesting. I think it's accurate, and I hadn't seen that perspective before. 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.
• draw_down 3y ago
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• 0xdeadbeefbabe 3y ago
  I'd like to ask a question if I may, how can you get excited about a culture that asks to ask?
• hgsgm 3y ago
  Why do people reblog old tropw essays, and why do they get upvoted? 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.
• tracerbulletx 3y ago
  People actually DO feel annoyed when people ask them for unreasonable things. So it's not unreasonable at all to take that into consideration and predict if a question will put them out. People are tuned to favor one strategy over another, but there is a real social cost to asking, and a real cost to not asking. There is no one right strategy, just another optimization problem that our brains have solved with emotional weights. Also the people who ask for things get offended all the time when people say no, so that's a problem too.
• mabbo 3y ago
  > 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 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.
  • breischl 3y ago
    That solution is a bit like the game theory solution of "I cut, you choose". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_choose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_choose
    • solarmist 3y ago
      Yup. It works well for both types of people as well.
  • dahfizz 3y ago
    I feel you. Some "guess" people are unable to just state what they want because they think it places a burden on the other person. But keeping your desires hidden creates an even larger burden! Just tell me what you want for dinner! 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.
    • RugnirViking 3y ago
      as someone from a heavily "guess" culture i'd say it's less about "keeping your desires hidden" and more about we are trained from birth to literally not think about our own desires. Like we would find it difficult to write down on a piece of paper in an empty room. Instead you are supposed to look after the needs of other people even as they look after you. 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.
• keiferski 3y ago
  I feel like this should be directly correlated with how much "tradition" plays a role in local culture. The more tradition, the more you're expected to "just get it" and guess the other person's thoughts via cultural context. The less tradition, the less rules there are to follow, and therefore the less connection you have to the other person. 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.
• outsidetheparty 3y ago
  The original MetaFilter comment lays the idea out in a much more balanced way than this article does, imo. The discussion of the idea here looks to be well on its way to mirroring that on MetaFilter (Ask vs Guess became a major part of that site's culture, it came up in quite a few threads over time.) https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-between-FU-and-Welcome#830421 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.)
  • JadeNB 3y ago
    > (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.
    • outsidetheparty 3y ago
      Definitely! 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.
• yaky 3y ago
  Having just re-read Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness, it seems that the guess culture from the arricle would apply to shifgrethor, a “game” of social status, where a lot is said by omission, and giving advice is viewed as an ultimate insult.
• chromoblob 3y ago
  Guess in an intimate relationship / communication context, Ask anywhere else.
  • ImPleadThe5th 3y ago
    Yeah I was kinda thinking both are useful and necessary in different contexts. Seems strange to prefer one.
• sneak 3y ago
  > 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/ https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/
  • JadeNB 3y ago
    > Man, people are so bad at communicating. 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.)
    • pseudalopex 3y ago
      > 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 …. 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.
• protastus 3y ago
  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.
• mvnuweucxqokii 3y ago
  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.
• willsmith72 3y ago
  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".
• snapetom 3y ago
  Wow, this strongly resonates with me, especially the tieback to Asian cultures. I was both told many times, and shown by example many times, that it was rude to put someone in awkward positions. I still carry that to this day in personal relationships, and my wife (white, US-born) doesn't understand why I don't just ask for things from our families/friends, often going to great lengths to avoid questions. 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.
  • jasondigitized 3y ago
    I don't mind a transactional mindset at work, but I'd prefer my personal life to not be treated and gamed as a set of transactions.
• tcgv 3y ago
  I mainly "Ask" for people in my inner circle, and "Guess" for everybody else
• solarmist 3y ago
  The most important thing I got from this was from the original Ask post forever ago. “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.
  • RangerScience 3y ago
    Seconding this. Anecdotally, the more multicultural a space is, the more it trends towards "ask".
    • solarmist 3y ago
      Through necessity.
    • jiggawatts 3y ago
      Unfortunately, this is not my experience. I work with many immigrant software developers, and the vast majority have not realised that they have to switch to an "ask" approach. 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."
      • RangerScience 3y ago
• aden1ne 3y ago
  I think the author is conflating American culture with Western culture at large.
• wheelerof4te 3y ago
  No one will guess for you what your needs or reasons for doing something are. You have to let them know. The hard part is knowing when and how to ask your question.
• nostrademons 3y ago
  I've also heard of "Tell" culture. To use the moving example: 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.
  • hosh 3y ago
    Also, in certain groups, people will deliberately troll each other in order suss out how they’d act under pressure… and whether they can be trusted to perform as part of a team under pressure.
    • gottorf 3y ago
      Hazing is the term.
      • watwut 3y ago
        Hazing is about proving your lack of boundaries and proving you are easy to make do what told. It is about picking people who won't tell "no" and will act as enablers when needed. 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.
    • watwut 3y ago
      None of that is about seeing a person under pressure, because they do nothing useful with the information. At best, information is ignored and at worst, used to pick bullying targets.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• rossdavidh 3y ago
  Great article. One point I would like to add, is that "guess" culture works great when there is already a lot of shared cultural background, but "ask" culture works better when people are coming from very different backgrounds (and thus won't know enough about what the other person wants or needs, to guess very accurately). Sure, it's good to find out more about where other people are coming from, but this takes time, and in the meantime stuff has to get done. I'm guessing this is why most workplaces are "ask" culture. 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.
• friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I think this is a bunch of over complication to explain away spinelessness when faced with the prospect of telling someone "no." Say no to people, it's empowering! 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.
• crawfordcomeaux 3y ago
  Would someone explain the difference between codependency and "guess culture"?
  • prewett 3y ago
    Codependency is when one person gets value for solving other people's problems for them ("saving" them), and the other person gets value out of having their problems being solved by other people (having a "savior"). 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).
• harrylove 3y ago
  I love seeing the world through new frames like this. I think it's refreshing, and forces a rethink of what I think I know. 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.
• tetha 3y ago
  Hm, interesting. I guess me with northern german heritage am very much more of an Ask-Person. 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?"
• spookie 3y ago
  Thanks for the post, it has really made me feel better about things in general! 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.
• maypop 3y ago
  It’s often two staged. First drop hints in hopes the other party will catch on. If that fails and you really want or still need it - you ask.
• rdtsc 3y ago
  > This all seemed ridiculous to us, so instead we drove the two hours, keeping our plan secret until we pulled up into our grandma’s driveway, so that no one could resist and thwart our plan. We had a lovely visit, and my mom later thanked us for making the drive. [...] This is guess culture — and it’s a lot of saying not really what you actually want, and it’s a lot of reading between the lines to try to figure out what people want. 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.
  • aidenn0 3y ago
    If someone tells me I'd be stupid to go visit grandma, and then decides I'm disloyal/unloving because I believed them, that's called lying and it's going to end my relationship with them pretty quickly.
    • rdtsc 3y ago
      I can see that being manipulative too but it’s also a cultural difference. That’s the crux of the article in a way. Some are of these things seem offensive and annoying but are rather normal for other cultures.
    • gitaarik 3y ago
      In that sense I would say many Americans are lying all the time, because they exaggerate everything ;)
• SirMaster 3y ago
  I'm firmly in the ask culture I guess. 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.
• g9yuayon 3y ago
  I grew up in China and the guess culture was predominant there. It was quite a culture shock after I came to the US. In a training session back when I was in IBM, the VP of marketing told us a story about the ask culture: he was an American-born Japanese. When Lou Gerstner asked him what he wanted, he instinctively tried to be humble. Lou cut him off and said: I can't help you if you don't tell me what you want. Come back in X months when you know the answer. The next time they met, the VP told Lou that he wanted to be an executive, and he got promoted soon. Another thing I learned in the training session was that leaders have different styles but all the executives demonstrated only one of the four key styles: direct and decisive. 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.
  • jasondigitized 3y ago
    In business, being direct is efficient and efficient "transactions" drive the business. In your personal life, at least in certain cultures, being transactional is seen as being shrewd and self serving.
• forinti 3y ago
  > It’s rude to put someone in a position where they have to say no to you 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.
• globular-toast 3y ago
  Something I noticed with my ex was how we differed in asking for help. I guess I am an asker and she is a guesser. 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.
• darchws 3y ago
  As someone coming from a 'guess culture' and having a manager from an 'ask culture,' one major problem I am having is not being able to say 'no' to my manager. My manager always emphasizes the importance of asking things around rather than expecting people to just know how to help you. I know he also just asks me with the expectation that I could say no, but I always feel like letting him down if I say no. Therefore, I tend to overcommit to things and work overtime. This looks good on performance (I always got good feedback), but I'll probably burn out at some point if I cannot get this communication right.
• sikkolata 3y ago
  Life is already too hard, let’s not bother ourselves by being have to “guess” something.
• SeanAnderson 3y ago
  I always liked explaining this concept in terms of Christmas. 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.
• lairv 3y ago
  The article make it look binary when in reality everyone is guessing to a certain degree. No one has ever come up to me in the street and asked for $1000. Everyone is guessing up to a point, but when there's too much incertitude, some decide to ask while others think it's better not to
• silentsea90 3y ago
  I belong to a don't ask or guess culture where i would rather just lift a mountain myself than ask my friends for help just so I don't inconvenience anybody, or be in their debt on a favor.
• patmcc 3y ago
  This always strikes me as funny, because I think the default interpretation (and the one shared in the article) is that it's largely a Western/Eastern divide - Americans are 'ask' and Asians are 'guess' - but from where I am in Canada I generally see exactly the opposite. I don't know if that's specific to my circles though. 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.
  • wisty 3y ago
    Maybe in a family the guess mode is more common while at work the ask mode is more common.
• RangerScience 3y ago
  A friend of mine (we're all pretty solidly "Ask", but ofc there's a mix) pointed out that a really important unspoken part of an "Ask" culture is what you are allowed to ask about - thankfully (and anecdotally) you can generally just straight-up ask "what can I ask for?". Still. Important realization, and definitely something I've failed at before.
  • jasondigitized 3y ago
    This. "Guessers" cannot stand "Askers" who don't know where the line is between a polite tactful request and a imposition. The classic example is someone coming into your town and asking if their family can stay at your house for a week instead of a hotel. Saying no for someone who doesn't want multiple guests to stay that long is a really uncomfortable spot to be in. Most of the time the line is crossed when the requestee has to sacrifice a non small amount of time, money, or comfort for the requestor's benefit.
• drc500free 3y ago
  I always enjoy the discussion around this concept. 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.
• guy4242 3y ago
  I'm from a guess culture. Then I went to an ask culture area for work (Coastal California). I had an under-powered, slow computer that I had to work on. When my manager found out, he was mad that I never said anything and that I never complained about it. I was shocked that he was mad. In the more rural area I was from, it would have been rude to complain about the tools that the company provided for you. You were told to just "suck it up", be quiet, and quit complaining. Those who complained too much were usually the first to get laid-off.
• galaxyLogic 3y ago
  Isn't it always better to try to guess how others might feel about your request, and not make it if you think there is a chance it would make people not answer your phone-call the next time? 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?
• darkwater 3y ago
  How questions/requests work in the Mediterranean Europe: - 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.
• grammers 3y ago
  People really should learn to say what they want - and also say no. Otherwise they'll just end up being unhappy because, whether they like it or not, there will always be people that are ignorant (and most of the times it won't even be on purpose).
• jancsika 3y ago
  One distinction: "guess culture" isn't easy to discern from low-self-esteem culture. But "ask culture" isn't easy to discern from narcissist culture. 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.
• sourcepluck 3y ago
  Did no-one else cringe at the gargantuan oversimplifications necessary to keep this alleged cultural distinction afloat? 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.
• EdgeExplorer 3y ago
  I think awareness is the main point here. 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.
• poopsmithe 3y ago
  I'm having trouble understanding the following sentence. > 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'.
• DoreenMichele 3y ago
  The formal terms for this difference are high context culture and low context culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_cultures 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.
  • jiggawatts 3y ago
    A common example of this is the US servicemen that had come back from tours of Iraq or Afghanistan telling stories of how lovely and "welcoming" the locals were. 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.
    • DoreenMichele 3y ago
      Someone from I think maybe Iran told an anecdote once on HN about visiting home with someone and eventually telling people "Don't offer him anything. He doesn't know how to say no."
      • Galacta7 3y ago
        Sounds like he lost his Persian sense of Tarof, lol. https://youtu.be/XAvzW1WZsN4 https://youtu.be/XAvzW1WZsN4
    • gardenhedge 3y ago
      Whereas in Turkey if you're offered tea it's impolite to refuse. If you finish it, they will keep topping it up.
• overgard 3y ago
  Hmm, I know it's frowned upon generally to say one culture is better than another, but I grew up in guess culture and I tend to gravitate towards that naturally, but a lot of my maturing as an adult has come from adopting more of ask culture and being more direct. 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.
• charlieroth 3y ago
  As a person from the US who recently moved to Sweden, this article has finally given me some words to explain the cultural "clash" I experience at work that I could never quite explain to myself or others.
• swayvil 3y ago
  Asking as submissive act. Thus avoided. 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.
• tempestn 3y ago
  These concepts don't generally apply universally to all things. There are things that are perfectly reasonable to ask for directly. "Could I have a glass of water?" "Could I use your bathroom?" There are other things that create an uncomfortable obligation. "Could I borrow $5000?" "Could you pick me up from the airport at 4am?" There's no point in beating around the bush about the first set, but it is polite in most cultures I'm familiar with to give a person an "out" of the second. 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.
• duxup 3y ago
  My guess culture in laws will not say where they want to go for dinner, but they will raise endless hypotheticals about where other people might want to go, even if other people didn’t say it. That way the discussion never ends and we end up somewhere nobody wants to go….
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    Ask them hypothetically where would someone like them typically want to go :)
    • duxup 3y ago
      I like this idea.
      • quickthrower2 3y ago
        It is like prompt engineering for humans :-)
• yafbum 3y ago
  > Navigating corporate America as a guess-culture person 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.
• chasing 3y ago
  Like this comment and send me $100.
• second_brekkie 3y ago
  Being from the UK, I feel its a generalisation to say the west is an ask culture. I really feel like there's more of a guess culture outside of close friendship in the UK, especially the higher up the social strata you go. 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!
  • another-dave 3y ago
    Yeah completely agree. Think the article was good read but talking about "Western society" as one bucket for something like this is _far_ too broad a brush. What counts as Western society, California to Greece?
• deanCommie 3y ago
  It's also important to point out that this isn't just geographic. 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)
• a_e_k 3y ago
  See also the HN discussion from a year ago on "Good conversations have lots of doorknobs": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32542260 The article discussed there sort of parallels this dichotomy, but applies it to conversational styles.
• harpiaharpyja 3y ago
  I personally don't understand guess culture. It seems really broken. 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.
  • lacerrr 3y ago
    What is being called "guess" culture here is I think very helpful when assessing people's social awareness and emotional intelligence. Of course, it doesn't work very well in heterogeneous groups of people, but it definitely does very well when people share a culture and have been brought up with common values.
• rdiddly 3y ago
  I feel like in addition to the cultural East-West and young-old biases mentioned in the article, there's also one about gender. At least in the US, girls/women are traditionaly encouraged to be sensitive, helpful, considerate (guess culture) while boys/men are encouraged to be assertive, clear/factual and not worry too much about what people think (ask culture).
• xyzelement 3y ago
  Resonates with something I recognized and to some extent fixed in myself. Not only would I hesitate to ask lest I seem unreasonable, I was foolishly assuming that others had done the same before asking me. And I would stupidly get frustrated with them for putting me in a bad situation by merely asking. I assumed they had figured out that I should say yes and they put a lot of pressure on me. Learning how to make simple requirements and decline request simply was liberating.
• leemcalilly 3y ago
  Ask culture at work and guess culture in your personal life.
• user_named 3y ago
  Every culture is both ask and guess. The person categorizing cultures is using their culture and subjectivity to do so.
• zestyping 3y ago
  Ask and Guess are each presented as extremes, which isn't that helpful. People don't belong 100% to one side or the other. 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.
• zajio1am 3y ago
  I think this is just different ways to handle information asymmetry. The asking side knows value of the favor to self but does not know the cost of the favor for the answering side, while the answering side knows the cost of the favor to self, but not value of it for the asking side. 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.
  • zestyping 3y ago
    This is a more nuanced and realistic characterization.
  • zajio1am 3y ago
    Also, while above i describe it in a symmetric way, there is an important asymmetry - which side pays the mental load of deciding whether the request is appropriate. In the 'ask' culture, it is the answering side (as the asking side just asks for what they want), in the 'guess' culture, it is the asking side (as the answering side is expected to accept.). From this point of view, it seems fair that such cost should pay the side initiating the communication.
    • zestyping 3y ago
      It's a collaboration. Both sides should work together to find a harmonious outcome; neither side should expect the other to take 100% responsibility.
• kishmat 3y ago
  there are numerous parameters to consider on this kind of topic. 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.
• Apploks 3y ago
  Just look at the world, people know how to speak, how to behave, what emotions and feelings to put on display, given the environment and the situation. It’s as if we have learned to be real people with each other ... That's just our whole culture of behavior, in fact, pursues only one extremely not noble goal, namely to hide our real thoughts and feelings.) Thanks for the article, it will help me understand my Asian friends. This is a different culture, which must also be respected and tried to be understood.
• j7ake 3y ago
  And what’s the culture where you have guessed correctly what a guest wants, but the guest must say no several times before reluctantly accepting ?
• ChuckMcM 3y ago
  When I first heard about "ask" vs. "guess" culture from a discussion on Twitter in early 2022 it was like a lightning bolt struck. So many things could be explained in this context. My Mom was from the south (Tennessee), my Dad from the north (upstate NY) our family was often wracked by misunderstandings. It confused the heck out of me. Fortunately both I and my wife lean much more to "ask" culture and we were close enough that after some initial misunderstandings in our marriage it settled out. We didn't have a name for it though, and this putting it into context really gave me a "Eureka" moment. 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!
• j7ake 3y ago
  In Netherlands the ask culture is so strong that it is not appropriate to ask “how are you doing” to strangers, because you don’t actually want to know how they are doing.
• Too 3y ago
  What I dislike about guess culture in certain individuals, is when they turn it around into a blackmailing, paint you into a corner, 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.
• archeantus 3y ago
  We’re guess people through and through. It’s really hard for my kids to say no to awkward things that their “friends” ask of them who are askers. How do you say no to askers in a way that they will know they can’t come to you with dumb asks in the future?
  • archeantus 3y ago
    For example my daughter has a friend who asks for all of her good stuff at lunch everyday…she has a hard time telling her no, even though she doesn’t want to give away all of her food.
• zqna 3y ago
  Guess culture arises where there is (relative) shortage of wealth (therefore more attention is spent on it and perception of it). People are obliged to offer/give something that they don't want because they want show off of higher capabilities than they actually are. Paradoxically, this produces a lot of waste, and also partially is the reason why these social groups are locked in being poor.
• nokya 3y ago
  I wouldn't call it "guess", the author is being too nice with the people described in the essay. 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".
• RajT88 3y ago
  I am a "guess" person myself. 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.
• yetanotherasian 3y ago
  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.
• pjmlp 3y ago
  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.
• greatNespresso 3y ago
  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!
• smeej 3y ago
  This is slightly tangential, but "guess culture" is impossible to navigate for people with ASD. 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.
• bick_nyers 3y ago
  Sometimes I like to add "and it's perfectly ok to say no" to certain queries.
• gwbas1c 3y ago
  Question for parents in "Guess" cultures: How do you train a child when they constantly ask for things? 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?
• gwbas1c 3y ago
  Question for adults in "Ask" cultures: How do you deal with adults who ask for unreasonable things or continue to ask for something after you have politely said no? 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.)
  • idopmstuff 3y ago
    Regardless of culture, at some point you just have to be able to tell someone to shut up, particularly those who are incentivized to abuse their ability to ask you things (e.g. salespeople).
    • gwbas1c 3y ago
      Well yes obviously! 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??
      • idopmstuff 3y ago
        In that case I think it helps to acknowledge that you understand their incentives/motivations and be even clearer than "no" - salespeople are trained that if you hear no the first ten times you ask and yes on the eleventh, that's still a sale. 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.
• vhiremath4 3y ago
  This feels like a good thing to know about co-workers. Feels like you could avoid a lot of misunderstanding by just understanding which culture they more closely ascribe to vs. things like Meyers Briggs or True Colors. Might implement this as a simple question for onboarding.
• mbar84 3y ago
  Reminds me of the Post "Wait vs. Interrupt Culture" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33266372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33266372