Comment by rconti
2 years 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.
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.
This seems very insightful to me. I think I'm another data point that mostly fits your observations.
Individual psychology definitely plays a huge role with me personally being on the far side of guess culture. I have pretty extreme social anxiety and the idea of asking someone for something fills me with dread every single time. Not because it shows weakness (I think), but because I don't want to impose on others. Asking someone I don't know for something is almost impossible. I can barely do it in a context where it's expected, like customer service.
I'm not wealthy, but I have moved around a bunch, especially as a child. I'd absolutely help out anyone who asked for it, but also try anticipate the needs of others.
I would go even further - it's complete nonsense. I'm going to guess the author never wondered why Americans feel uncomfortable asking for a discount at a store and would rather just not buy when they would've happily bought it at half the price, whereas in many parts of Asia, it's common for customers to ask for what seem like outrageous discounts to a westerner. Norms are highly contextual - in every culture there are things you can ask for and there are things you can't - and there's huge individual variation in the willingness to adhere to norms and the willingness to make others uncomfortable to get what you want.
> [Because of something something Asian culture] My parents rarely had to make explicit asks of me,
It baffles me how anyone with any kind of awareness could write this.
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.)
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.)
To be completely anecdotal: I grew up, live, and work in northeastern US, which according to this comment section seems to be as ask-culture as it gets, but when I work with Europeans I feel like I'm the one bumbling around with assumptions and implicit context, whereas they are more comfortable plainly asking for what they need and politely saying no.
(Or maybe it's function of who I work with from each continent? I work with a range of seniority levels in the US, but the European engineers I get to work with tend to be on the more senior side, and I imagine western business experience and ask-culture-adeptness are corollated).
As an American interacting with Europeans in the US, you are more in tune with the local culture than them. They are probably aware that things are different from what they are used to, thus Europeans (really, most outsiders) are more likely to be up front when communicating with Americans.
My family is American. My mom is "guess culture" and my dad is "ask culture", both to an extreme. They were both born and raised in the same town and have nearly identical ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Not sure what goes on in other countries, but it's dealers choice here in the States imo.
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.
I feel like British politeness is a huge counterpoint to this.