Ask vs Guess Culture, once again!

May 20, 2022 1:38 PM

Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer Mary Robinette Kowal offers various writing tips on her TikTok such as why "Show, Don't Tell makes her cranky", "Show, Don't Tell, Part 2", "'Write What You Know' Isn't What You Think", and "How To Start Writing". She also has one of the most eloquent examples of Ask vs Guess Culture.

She also has a cat that "talks" via pre-recorded sayings attached to buttons.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (35 comments total)

I encounter/engage in this (as an asker/church of interruption adept) and never really thought about how to write it. But then, characterization has never been one of my strong points. And that is a very good, simple everyday example of how two people might approach the same need, something that only a few lines of dialogue can establish a lot (or cause readers to imagine a lot) about a character.

This also put me down the rabbit hole to the other ask v guess and conversation type threads, which were fascinating.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:11 PM on May 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

She mentions the "dog tax". Ms. Kowal, show yourself. I know you're here!
posted by amtho at 3:58 PM on May 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

This is my first time hearing of ask vs guess. I'm going to send this video to my spouse and see if they agree that we suffer from this type of communication problem.
posted by McNulty at 5:25 PM on May 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

The askers just don't know how hard they are being silently judged.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:39 PM on May 20, 2022 [9 favorites]

The askers just don't know how hard they are being silently judged.

Duh. How would we know whether you're judging us or not? You expect us to guess?
posted by a car full of lions at 1:29 AM on May 21, 2022 [18 favorites]

I commend Mary Robinette Kowal to you for her written works.

I have a question (it's way down, please be patient). "Ask vs guess" pushes my buttons. To object is to blame the people embedded in a thing that's enshrined as culture -- calling them names is to blame victims, so please take this from a place of love and with positive intent. Crucially if I'm wrong and you have to tell me 'no' I learn from it and we're better for the experience.

From where I sit, it's a daft choice to guess that a 'no' answer will offend or to be so invested in not being wrong that you do a dance to avoid 'no'. (It's delightful art -- though I think 'cute' is disempowering so I'm avoiding that word -- and you've got to do you.)

I can only guess who are the figureheads of the community whose example becomes a pattern to follow: people in power who can't be challenged when they're wrong. I get why you'd choose to follow their lead to sit in their community. Let's note that behaviour is choice and you don't have to follow their pattern.

It's a pattern I recognise from the ✌🏼"meritocracy"✌🏼 at work -- a lot of colleagues with fragile egos unable to be contradicted mean that we absorb an inability to be wrong. (I very much resemble this remark: white male, educated and English-speaking.)

That inability to be wrong has to be countered: my work teams have to be safe spaces to raise heterodox ideas and to evaluate other hypotheses for what they are: just ideas. That goes for anyone, whether you look like 'one of us' or not as we aim for inclusive workplaces, and we've got to put effort in to allow people to learn and be confident in trying new and different things. We say "there's no such thing as a stupid question -- only a stupid question asked twice."

I thank you for reading. I ask: do you see why this pushes my buttons?

McNulty: This is my first time hearing of ask vs guess. I'm going to send this video to my spouse and see if they agree that we suffer from this type of communication problem.

Well, are you going to ask or make them guess?!?
posted by k3ninho at 4:37 AM on May 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

I go with "ask vs. hint".
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:11 AM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is my first time hearing of ask vs guess

Then you might find the original pretty interesting - previously.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:21 AM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

> In my experience, one picks up Ask or Guess from one’s parents, so sort of but not as conspiratorially as you seem to suspect.

Though not necessarily, as I've discovered! I (extremely so) and to a somewhat lesser extent my wife, are Ask. My older (8) daughter is very clearly Ask.

But my younger daughter is such a strong Guess in spite of us doing everything we can to make her ask. "Dada, there's something sweet and cold in the refrigerator!" "Dada, I'm hotter than I want to be." Can you ask for what you want? But no, no matter how much prompting she's given, she won't say "May I have a popsicle" -- even to the point of not getting what she wants.
posted by dmd at 6:15 AM on May 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

From where I sit, it's a daft choice to guess that a 'no' answer will offend or to be so invested in not being wrong that you do a dance to avoid 'no'.

I come from a guess culture family, and living in a country that leans more guess in style than the USA. I think you are starting in the wrong place. Within guess culture, one only asks directly for something if one guesses that the person you are asking from is willing to do/give the thing. Anyone who is guess culture who, for example, asks me directly to lend them a book is going to be offended if I decline to do so. That is how it works. It's not daft to guess that it will offend. In the link that Ashwagandha posted, you can really clear examples of guess answers and the underlying mindset.

Ask v guess isn't at all about an inability to decline something, or to challenge ideas. Simply that the words one uses in guess culture are more indirect. It is possible to decline things without saying no. For example, "the cereal packet is too high for me to reach" + "sorry, the stepstool is under the counter" is functionally equivalent to "can you get the cereal down for me" + "no, but there's a step stool under the counter". Except that as a guess person the second one feels much less polite.
posted by plonkee at 6:32 AM on May 21, 2022 [11 favorites]

Not sure if we're ask or guess, but a pure, unadorned "no" is practically a swear word in Chile. People always, always, make some sort of excuse instead of saying no. "I don't have any on me", "sorry I can't today", "sorry I just ran out", etc.
I like to answer unreasonable requests with a flat "no", and people literally do double takes, or repeat the request, as if unable to process the word "no" in its unencumbered glory.
posted by signal at 7:02 AM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

plonkee: I come from a guess culture family, and living in a country that leans more guess in style than the USA. I think you are starting in the wrong place.
I will continue to disagree with you. I'm mindful you have to live there.

also plonkee:Within guess culture, one only asks directly for something if one guesses that the person you are asking from is willing to do/give the thing. Anyone who is guess culture who, for example, asks me directly to lend them a book is going to be offended if I decline to do so. That is how it works. It's not daft to guess that it will offend.
You've normalised and internalised this and it helps you function at home. Besides that, it's okay to be wrong, we all do sometimes and we learn from it.

again plonkee: Ask v guess isn't at all about an inability to decline something, or to challenge ideas. Simply that the words one uses in guess culture are more indirect.
And really useful for squashing dissent or acknowledging difference. Huge challenges to narrative or rhetorical interaction setting up expectations and overcoming them. I guess this is incivil but: are you part of the privileged few, patriarchy and/or hegemony in your community?
posted by k3ninho at 7:28 AM on May 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

People who come fron guess culture learned early on that being direct and honest about their desires might very well make someone explode on you. My parents would rip me a new asshole if I asserted myself in what would be considered a "healthy way." It had to be Their Idea to give me something. Even now if I try to assert myself in any way, I usually get ignored or piss someone off. It just does not work if I try it. It's not safe or ok for me to be direct/originate an idea.

Heck if I know how dmd's kid came out guess in an ask family, though. That baffles me.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:50 AM on May 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

k3ninho, you seem intent on interpreting things in a particular way and not care too much how many ohter countries/ culture you are disparaging along the way.

I, too, come from a guess culture, and in principle it works as well - or as badly - as I have seen cultures (or groups) work that are more ask. There is little difference in how I would judge someone who is a direct 'ask' in my culture and who forces me to either comply with their request (to keep the interaction smooth) or deny their request (thereby forcing me to be socially ungracious) - they would be an arsehole no matter the amount of power they hold. If they hold power over ME, then they in effect force me to comply or bear the consequences.

This is different where power relations are understood to be unequal and accepted as such - like a direct boss who enjoys respect - there a direct ask is expected and wouldn't be regarded as socially coercive. Another situation is in intimate situations - I'd say we are, weirdly enough, much more OK without a lot of 'please' and 'thank you'.

The distinction between 'ask' and 'guess' is frequently minimal, as plonkee describes - you just need to be a little bit more attentive to non-verbal signals and hedge a little bit more, that's all. People disagree frequently, extensively, and loudly, at work and in all other spheres of life. Far and away the most tyrannical outfits I've worked at are western, very ask, companies/ corporations.

The major problem in guess culture comes when two distinct guess cultures meet, where the conventions of one don't aply to the other, and noone has a strong enough basis to read between the lines (or can't even figure out what the lines are).

Additionally, these are not hard lines, like you can't be ask if you are guess and vice versa. In my experience, there is typically a mix of both with one being possibly emphasized over the other in many situations. But the person who is truly 'guess' and has a fainting fit or something if confronted with 'ask'-style communication - well, I don't know what to say about that person, since I havn't met them.
posted by doggod at 7:54 AM on May 21, 2022 [13 favorites]

One thing my partner and I noticed recently is that our Ask vs Guess-ness can be very context dependent. E.g., Ask in a family setting but Guess at work, or even regarding more granular topics such as making plans vs needing emotional support. People are complicated. Though I think this is fairly intuitive once you understand that Ask vs Guess is really about how you model the other person, and we have all sorts of models and intuition and expectations for what other people are thinking based on different situations.
posted by ropeladder at 8:26 AM on May 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

Well I think it was too direct to ASK but it’s something that’s ok to HINT at, and let the commenter and others reflect on - for instance, by saying something like:

“That mindset might be more common among the privileged few who enjoy more social power within a given context, and less common among the people who are usually subjugated by that group.”

The CEO gets to Ask. The receptionist and cleaner have to Guess. It’s not because of their culture or preference, it’s because of their relative social status within that specific workplace context.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 9:13 AM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

On "show don't tell", it's a shame that this has become a dogma, rather than a tool that writers choose to use if it suits their purpose. Prior to the 20th century writers mixed showing and telling according to their artistic goals. For example, Jane Austen uses telling to help readers finely calibrate their judgments of her characters: "The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself".

Kowal says in the video that "show don't tell" makes sense as advice for playwrights, but even on the stage, a playwright might choose to tell the action and dramatize only the characters' reactions, as in ancient tragedies, or in Shakespeare's history plays, where events like battles and murders, or spectacles like Cleopatra's barge, are often narrated to us by messengers.
posted by cyanistes at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2022 [5 favorites]

k3hinho, you’re adding Tell to the taxonomy here.

I think Guess culture is well-adapted to scarcity. One set of my grandparents had a whole line of rueful jokes specifically from the Depression, e.g., when all of a dish had been eaten the hostess would say brightly "There’s more down cellar in a teacup!" which kept anyone from asking for something that couldn’t be had.

There’s a lot of great literature of people talking around the unthinkable because someone’s going to have to do it.

On the other hand, sometimes the scarcity is imaginary or immoral (someone who demands all the authority), and then Guess is making things worse. I still find it useful to try and figure out what there’s not enough of in the psychological climate.
posted by clew at 10:31 AM on May 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

"And really useful for squashing dissent or acknowledging difference. Huge challenges to narrative or rhetorical interaction setting up expectations and overcoming them. I guess this is incivil but: are you part of the privileged few, patriarchy and/or hegemony in your community?"

So, as a Guess culture person, that's really not at all how it works. Japanese culture is very "guess" -- German culture is very "ask." Midwestern Americans are very "guess," while their New York friends are very "ask." In sociological literature, it's often discussed as high-context/low-context cultures, or direct and indirect communication, but that doesn't capture the entirety of it either. Understanding the difference and being able to at least adjust how you interact is a huge part of being culturally competent and respectful of other cultures. One of the huge lessons I learned as a mod (early, and painfully) is that my mode of cultural communication isn't always appropriate for a large, multi-national website. What I considered "polite and direct" was to other users from different cultural backgrounds "confusing, indirect, and unclear." (Then there was a period of calibration where I discovered that I was very bad at telling the difference between "direct and clear" and "rude" and had to run some things by the other mods to be sure I was landing in the right place.)

The joke that we tell in my family is, I'm Midwestern and from a very guess culture. When my kids say they're going to do something crazy, I say, "That may not be your best idea," and my kids, also being Midwestern, correctly interpret this as, "Oh God, I'm going to lose an arm! I should make a different choice." My husband, who is from an Ask part of the US, hears that as, "Neat, it must be my second best idea!" and proceeds to do the disastrous thing (resulting, in one case, in a broken collarbone). After the collarbone one, I said, "I told you that was a terrible idea!" "No you didn't!" "I said, 'That's not your best idea!' HOW MUCH MORE CLEAR COULD I BE?"

The way I often explain Midwestern "indirectness" to non-Midwesterners is, when you're making a request of someone, or imposing on them in some say, you always do it in a tentative way, as the opening bid in a negotiation, so the other person has a way to refuse without losing face. Properly done, it's neither manipulative nor particularly indirect; it's just negotiating. You both don't want to be rude, but you don't want to force anybody else to be rude. So you make a "bid" that leaves open ways for the other person to turn you down without having to be rude -- typically by foreclosing as few options as possible. I talked a little bit about how Midwestern indirectness is actually a form of building and affirming relationships here. (Here's an amusing Thrillist piece about Midwestern Nice that uses video clip examples.)

In my new job, my immediate team involves people from 9 countries (and is still expanding!). One of the things they really drilled hard on in my interviews was whether I could communicate cross-culturally, which mean "did I recognize my native cultural communication methods?" and "did I realize these were not universal?" and "was I capable of adapting to other people's methods, avoiding miscommunications, and building good relationships?" Working at MetaFilter has given me a LOT of competencies in this arena, and I was able to provide a lot of examples, of times when I failed and what I learned, of ways I did better, of ways I managed my own discomfort when out of my native milieu. (And it's a good thing too -- I've already been working a lot with my German colleagues, and GOOD LORD are they abrupt in their e-mails. They're super-nice people! It's just a cultural communication difference! But it's hard not to be like "Whoa, did I do something wrong?")

Anyway, it seems needless to say, but your mode of dismissing all forms of cultural communication than your preferred one is itself a mode of quashing dissent and ensuring only people who are like you can function in your team. You say, "That inability to be wrong has to be countered: my work teams have to be safe spaces to raise heterodox ideas and to evaluate other hypotheses for what they are: just ideas. That goes for anyone, whether you look like 'one of us' or not as we aim for inclusive workplaces, and we've got to put effort in to allow people to learn and be confident in trying new and different things" And yet you've dismissed maybe half the world from even being ABLE to function in your teams, because you don't like or respect differing modes of cultural communication. People on your team who don't communicate the way you do don't feel safe raising heterodox ideas, because you refuse to hear ideas that aren't raised in the language you prefer.

To be blunt and direct, then: If you truly want to create an inclusive workplace where people feel comfortable being wrong and raising heterodox ideas, you are doing a really bad job of it. You need to do some cultural competency training in communication, and stop assuming that YOUR mode of communication is the only way that someone can function in your group. You are excluding entire cultures (and probably also a lot of women, since in many cultures, women are socialized to be less direct) by insisting on a single form of communication. You are the one squashing dissent, and perpetuating a hierarchy where only certain people are allowed in the club -- and you're doing it so effectively, and with such blindness to your own biases, that you think you're doing the opposite.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:49 AM on May 21, 2022 [42 favorites]

Yeah, anyone who thinks Ask is morally superior to Guess has never been around people who weaponize "I'm just being honest." Which is very nice for you! But power can oppress in any culture.

And as much as I appreciated and continue to appreciate the original conception, I also cosign Eyebrows McGee's point that it is incomplete (that's not a fault, it's true of any model we use to conceptualize our complex world). Despite the name, when you are fluent in the culture you are often not actually "guessing" per se, you are just using more than just the literal words to understand what is being communicated, hence "high context". If you ask someone to do something, they say "yes," but while shrugging and intoning it to sound like a question, and you interpret that to mean they may not be able to or know how to do the thing you've asked, then congratulations, you know how to Guess, and you know it can be just as unambiguous as literal words.
posted by solotoro at 11:59 AM on May 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

> In my experience, one picks up Ask or Guess from one’s parents, so

Dad was guess (Anglican, rural Quebec, English, somewhat introverted), Mom was ask (Catholic, rural Nova Scotia, daughter of a salesman, no introvert). The simplest way I can put it is --

Dad taught me to read the room;
Mom taught me not to be afraid to ask aloud, "Does anybody want that last piece of pie?"

I do like pie.
posted by philip-random at 12:41 PM on May 21, 2022 [5 favorites]

I don’t think one is morally superior to the other, but having worked in a lot of different places with colleagues from dozens of countries - for the most part the askers rose to positions of power / started their own companies / drove ambitious projects and the guessers filled out the teams and did competent work in support.

Guessers did well in very corporate environments though! Great at navigating the ego politics of directors and progressing themselves through the mega corp by navigating relationships without becoming a tall poppy.
posted by thedaniel at 2:11 PM on May 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yes it's easy to characterise Ask as honest and direct, and Guess as manipulative and avoiding conflict, but humans are humans, and will find ways to be awesome as well as shitty regardless of their culture.
Ask can be the husband who glibly says that his wife only needs to ask him to do the dishes. How's he supposed to know, if she doesn't tell him to do it?
Communication is not just verbal, and it doesn't just happen in the isolated context of the moment. The hierarchy of power, and the history of everyone involved is as much a part of it as the words being said.
Ignoring the disparity in power, the history of a relationship, the context, and insisting on everyone communicating in the way you think is clear and straightforward is a power move, and can be just as silencing and manipulative.
posted by Zumbador at 11:19 PM on May 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

Also, I think there is a problem with conflating a cultural style like Ask vs Guess or High Context vs Low Context, with an individual's way of managing conflict.

It makes it possible to glide over what might be going on in a relationship. One child (especially the youngest!) being more conflict avoiding isn't an expression of their culture is it? It's an expression of their personality, enhanced by their experience.
posted by Zumbador at 11:33 PM on May 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

That inability to be wrong has to be countered: my work teams have to be safe spaces to raise heterodox ideas and to evaluate other hypotheses for what they are: just ideas.

Sounds nice, but as someone who is habitually on the "observe and evaluate" side of things, brainstorming/spitballing spaces are incredibly uncomfortable for me. I don't know if this is an introvert/extrovert thing or an ask/guess thing or simply a personality thing, but it's certainly not rooted in childhood trauma or anything -- maybe for some people it is; for me it's just ... being me.

What's more, I, like probably most women, have had my "brainstorming idea" restated ten minutes later by a white man who then got heaped with praise and given the project. So now I'd much rather submit my ideas via email or chat, so there's a clear indicator of who should be given credit.
posted by basalganglia at 6:36 AM on May 22, 2022 [9 favorites]

coew: k3hinho, you’re adding Tell to the taxonomy here.
Help me out, tell me more about what you mean by that and how it adds to this distinction?

Am I far off it if I guess that I've connected the indirect request of 'the cereal box is on a too-high shelf' with the task of inferring a need from the information told in the statement? You guess what's being asked from the thing you're told?

(Note that I didn't engage the 'show don't tell' other portion of the page because it's obvious to me that writing for stage or screen is different to writing for the page. Kowal is teaching us about writing and only raises 'ask-vs-guess' for structuring character conflict.)

Eyebrows, well f_ck, that looks like I've pushed your buttons properly. I hope you feel safe sharing what you did. I think we're in radical agreement: I raise the example of workplaces because they are terrible and I'm taking responsibility to do better -- but you assumed I'm the same performer in that context as I am here.

I'll review what people have written and see if I can learn from it, and I ask you to do the same.
posted by k3ninho at 6:41 AM on May 22, 2022

plonkee: I come from a guess culture family, and living in a country that leans more guess in style than the USA. I think you are starting in the wrong place.

k3ninho: I will continue to disagree with you. I'm mindful you have to live there.

I enjoy living here because I like the indirect culture. To me, it is one of the great joys of daily life. I find unrelenting direct/low context/ask cultures tiresome, although I respect that when one is accustomed to them, they are not as hard work as they feel to me.

plonkee: Ask v guess isn't at all about an inability to decline something, or to challenge ideas. Simply that the words one uses in guess culture are more indirect.

k3ninho:And really useful for squashing dissent or acknowledging difference.

Anything can be used for that purpose. For example, I find your very 'ask' approach in responding to my comments is failing to acknowledge difference, and squashing dissent from me specifically. Nevertheless, I continue to assert that guess culture and ask culture are morally equivalent to each other. They are simply different ways of interacting with other people. So far as I can tell, people tend to prefer the one in which they grew up.

k3ninho: I guess this is incivil but: are you part of the privileged few, patriarchy and/or hegemony in your community?

Yes it is incivil. You will have make do with assuming my level of privilege is similar to yours, whatever that is.

I was trying to explain something which you sounded interested in. I am sorry that my explanation did not help you better understand how a high context/indirect/guess culture works. Perhaps it was helpful for someone else.
posted by plonkee at 7:57 AM on May 22, 2022 [10 favorites]

Far and away the most tyrannical outfits I've worked at are western, very ask, companies/ corporations.

This is my experience. When I tell Americans about the Ask vs. Guess concept they immediately assume Ask is better, because American culture conflates bluntness with honesty. But my experience is that all cultures are Guess cultures, just to greater or lesser extents, and that Ask companies weaponize Ask against its employees, especially lower-level employees, in expecting us to know what things are OK to Ask about (which is a very Guess thing to do) while loudly proclaiming that everything is great because if you want something you only have to ask, so if your needs are not being met it's your fault.

Personally I am trying to be more Ask because my culture of origin is at odds with where I live, but I don't think one style is any better than the other.
posted by joannemerriam at 8:02 AM on May 22, 2022 [7 favorites]

The CEO gets to Ask. The receptionist and cleaner have to Guess. It’s not because of their culture or preference, it’s because of their relative social status within that specific workplace context.

for the most part the askers rose to positions of power / started their own companies / drove ambitious projects and the guessers filled out the teams and did competent work in support.

My guess is that some of those askers in that example (not all of them, certainly not all askers in general) rose to power for the same reason they were askers in the first place - because they already had a fair bit of privilege to start with. They had a long experience of getting away with not considering other people's feelings overly much, and the corresponding sense of entitlement required to reach for that brass ring.

Now, clearly as we see in this thread too, most askers don't see this as a power thing. They don't overly consider other people's feelings because they don't expect their own feelings to be overly considered either. Or maybe they would argue they are very considerate of feelings on many occassions, just not necessarily of any feelings involved with losing or saving face. They are, after all, very much for expressing feelings, it's just the face-saving-thing they don't see the need for.

It's rare to meet an asker who doesn't think they can take it just as they dish it. And sometimes you even meet one where that's perfectly true. But there are no guarantees and the guesser can just guess. It's a sad fact of this fallen world, but there are some things you can't find out by asking, not even from an asker. Because no matter how comitted to honesty they are, they can only be as honest with you as they are with themselves.

So why should a guesser trust that the asker can handle the no? Some people are just generally trusting, and more power to them - I think it can be a wise strategy too; all instruments of risk managment increase transaction costs and rarely eliminate the risk entirely; sometimes the best course of risk management is just to accept the risk - but I do actually think it's a bit much to expect that from everyone in all situations on principle. So those askers ask happily along, secure in their knowledge that they could handle a no, and they do get those nos, on occasion, but their conviction isn't tested too rigourously, because more often than not it's a yes. How obvious to conclude that ask-culture must be the superior strategy. The silent judgment is easy to ignore, if the judgers are in no position/don't want to/can't afford to waste the energy to start shit with you.

Of course there are askers, who don't start with any privilege to begin with, who get a lot of nos, who get called rude or socially incompetent, who get excluded because they haven't read the room, and they keep being askers anyway, because they just can't help it, or because they wouldn't want it any other way, and clearly we have to conclude that their hearts are pure.

But personally, I'm an asker, and I'm absolutely not one of those. I may be a German native speaker, but I'm actually Austrian, where passive aggressiveness and subversive servility reigns, so I did sometimes get the sense that I'm less tactful than average, when I was younger. I have certainly gotten complaints over my email-style. People have told me that they feel run over by me. I have been compared to a tank. And that's just the feedback from fellow blunt people, willing to talk plainly. I feel quite queasy about all the others who might have at various occasions felt cowed by me. Unsurprisingly, I haven't concluded that directness is the superior communication style.

But I do, still, very much enjoy not mincing words. I'm fairly task oriented, and enoy working with people who are also rather task-oriented and can leave their ego out of it, mostly. And I have historically, in spite of the occasional silent and not so silent judgment, gotten away with it quite a bit, because I do tend to get results, and have often been lucky to find the people who can appreciate that. I've been fairly direct at school and university, where I usually got top grades. I've been fairly direct in my last job, where I was the regional manager's trusted right-hand-woman, (and also inconvenient to replace, because nobody within the company would have wanted my job). I haven't been at all direct in that job where I worked for the narcissist perfectionist with the atrocious staff turnover. Funny how that works.

I'm a teacher now and I'm thinking long and hard about how direct to be with my students, and more importantly, how direct I should expect them to be with me. To be a teacher, and to ask at the end of the lecture "any questions?" and to think that's the end of your responsiblity - I'm sure anyone can see the potential flaw with that approach.
posted by sohalt at 8:11 AM on May 22, 2022 [5 favorites]

Plonkee: I was trying to explain something which you sounded interested in. I am sorry that my explanation did not help you better understand how a high context/indirect/guess culture works.

I think you did alright for explaining. I understand it well. Thank you.

sohalt: in this thread ... most askers don't see this as a power thing. They don't overly consider other people's feelings because they don't expect their own feelings to be overly considered either. Or maybe they would argue they are very considerate of feelings on many occassions, just not necessarily of any feelings involved with losing or saving face. They are, after all, very much for expressing feelings, it's just the face-saving-thing they don't see the need for.

I definitely considered power and couched my ask expecting to lose face -- being called 'incivil' shows how much respect that got me. Aren't we all due the dignity of any other dog on the internet? (Shush, nobody knows you're a dog on the internet.)

joannemerriam: When I tell Americans about the Ask vs. Guess concept they immediately assume Ask is better, because American culture conflates bluntness with honesty. But my experience is that all cultures are Guess cultures, just to greater or lesser extents, and that Ask companies weaponize Ask against its employees, especially lower-level employees, in expecting us to know what things are OK to Ask about (which is a very Guess thing to do) while loudly proclaiming that everything is great because if you want something you only have to ask, so if your needs are not being met it's your fault.

Thank you for putting this as you have, it's helped me. I'll be your prison buddy, joannemerriam and look out for you!
posted by k3ninho at 9:37 AM on May 22, 2022 [1 favorite]

most askers don't see this as a power thing.

As an asker, engaging in a guessing game about basic stuff as "the cereal packet is too high for me to reach" seems more about power than directly asking. The guesser seems to be indicating that something they would normally use is put in an inappropriate location, and therefore we both need to take time to re-arrange the pantry to put the cereal in a more appropriate location. They also take my mind space, which is fine if I'm not busy but if I am thinking about something more important than the pantry and the cereal, seems like a real invasion of my mental capacity and my time. In other words, I would never assume that it was a direct ask to simply get the cereal for them.

So IMO, ask vs guess is neutral towards people's feelings and mental state, neither is superior or inferior.

Ask can be the husband who glibly says that his wife only needs to ask him to do the dishes. How's he supposed to know, if she doesn't tell him to do it?
So I don't consider this to be an example of ask or guess culture because I don't think the status of basic household tasks should be held in the mental state of either party.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:46 PM on May 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

I love that this thing we made up on metafilter is still going strong after all these years... well played.
posted by some loser at 3:08 AM on May 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just as a general thing, I've got some ask tendencies and and some hint training, and it can be incredibly hard to be direct about something where you've been trained to hint. It can be worthwhile to make the effort, but it's not trivial.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:33 AM on May 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yep, it's very difficult to make yourself say something whose content or manner you've internalised as rude. Even in a lesson context. I took Dutch lessons when I lived in NL, and I remember one lesson in which we were supposed to explain how we would say something very direct in our native language (annoyingly, I can't remember exactly what). I couldn't bring myself to do it; all I could come up with was "we would never say that in the UK, it would be incredibly rude".
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:11 AM on May 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

This thread illustrates why I don't like the Ask Culture vs. Guess Culture framework of understanding people's preferred manner of communication. It *sounds* like a super useful and really rather true description of our world. But there's just too many disparate aspects of communication that are being shoved into these boxes which just don't fit. This construction was much better off in its deconstructed state. We were better off before this framework was articulated.

If she says "The cereal is up too high for me to reach," and her husband bristles at her words calling her phrasing passive aggressive, the problem isn't Ask vs. Guess culture, and insisting on looking at it through the lens of Ask v.s Guess doesn't actually make this relationship work more smoothly! It's just a newfangled way to plonk a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus narrative onto of the conflict. It's insulting to both parties. In this particular case it's so much better to look at it as, say for instance, a Gottman-esque notion of "bids for attention". If your spouse is announcing that they have a problem reaching the cereal, do you react by rolling your eyes and judging your spouse as passive aggressive (one of the four horsemen, contempt!), or do you 'turn towards' your spouse's bid for attention and ask if your spouse needs help? OR! You can use the concept of "active listening" to understand this conflict (husband could practice being curious about what wife is trying to communicate instead of immediately passing judgment and dismissing her), or maybe "childhood trauma" (does husband have a history of a parent who was passive aggressive, and he's getting triggered?) or literally any approach, imo. Shedding the framework of Ask vs. Guess culture to explain this minor household misunderstanding instantly makes the actual problem so much easier to grasp, and so much easier to target with a proper solution.

It's the same for all the other examples or idea mentioned here on this thread. Using the lens of Ask vs. Guess fucks things up, discarding that lens makes everything better.

- We are better off when our social norms tilt more towards viewing communication as assertive vs. passive-aggressive, rather than making it easier for passive-aggressive to hide behind Guess Culture as their excuse.

- We are better off when we keep our norms favorable to judging communication as rude/hurtful vs. sensitive /kind, rather than making it socially acceptable for rude, hurtful people to say, "Hey, I'm just an Ask Culture person, come on, be tolerant of differences."

- We are better off when we insist on framing common domestic arguments between a het couple as "sexist division of domestic labor" rather than making it socially acceptable to argue that "Hey, if you're Guess Culture and I'm Ask Culture, obviously you should be able to Guess that I need to be Asked to do chores around the house."

- We are better off when we insist on framing the immense silencing power of hierarchical communities as oppression rather than letting tyrants off the hook with the ~cultural relativism~ excuse of "Guess Culture."

It's a trojan horse of a concept, this Ask Vs. Guess Culture idea. Looks shiny and awesome from the outside but it's got sneaky conflict magnifiers within.
posted by MiraK at 8:01 AM on May 27, 2022 [2 favorites]