Comment by noahlt

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.

“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.

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.

"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.

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."

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That framing is at least as bad as the framing you project on the Ask/Guess split.

Clearer communication is always better.

Maybe "Inquire vs Infer" is better?

Trust sounds good but is based not knowing.

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.