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Are you an Asker or a Guesser?
May 14, 2010 - 2:19pm
Quote:
This terminology comes from a brilliant web posting by Andrea Donderi that's achieved minor cult status online. We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything – a favour, a pay rise– fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid "putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept."Neither's "wrong", but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleasantness results. An Asker won't think it's rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor – or just an Asker, who's assuming you might decline. If you're a Guesser, you'll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it's a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they're diehard Askers.
I'm most definitely a guesser.
Why do you ask?
I can only guess.
See, I totally misinterpreted the thread title before I read the OP.
I thought it meant something like this: Some people who don't know something ask; others guess.
In that revised sense, we have about 99% guessers on babble.
Sorry for the drift.
I'm not purely one of the other. One idea that I've adopted in my line of work is "You won't get what you don't ask for." So I ask for the best case scenario, hopefully one that is within reason and has a win-win. That means spending some time and energy figuring out what is reasonable and some thought to mutual benefit.
I guess I have to ask, why should anyone want to be a guesser? I find Canadians are too polite, and it's mostly due to the fact that we have never faced adversity like they have in other countries not endowed with so much land area and natural wealth, or in other countries where people have had to deal with war, natural disasters, and shortages. I'm not saying Canadians would not deal well in those instances, just that it's not our experience as a general rule. We have a relatively tiny population living in a very large and naturally wealthy country for want of little else but a modern democracy to better share the wealth.
In the words attributed to Grace Hopper, it is often easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.
Somewhere on that spectrum are shadings of gender conditioning as well. I suspect it's still true that more women are Guessers than Askers; people who feel vulnerable or dependent are more apt to work by indirection or nuance. It's not a bad thing to learn your way out of some of that, in the way that Timebandit describes, although Guessers have some intellectual advantages in the arts, as the original poster says.
All the same, I suspect that if you push disadvantaged people past a certain point of vulnerability -- if they begin to fear for their very survival, or if they fear for others dependent on them, especially children -- they become very good at being Askers perforce.
I have to be a Guesser -- that situation of feeling crummy rotten awful at having to turn down a direct social request ("Can I crash at your place for a while?") is one I know too well. Argh. The agony.
Just wondering how this all fits in with the tit for tat algorythm that is the basis for human interaction. I suppose Askers would tend to be takers/non cooperators and allways cooperators and guessers are the cooperate with cooperators types.
Anyway, I think things like this are generally instructive, but it's not something you can use to predict individual outcomes. I'm a guesser on most things, I suppose, but an asker in others, and I suspect everyone has been both at one time or another.
I'm an asker- as long as nobody minds that is.
lol
guesser = passive aggressive, whilst some, mainly the guessers think it is being "cultured".
Oh remind, we all know you're an Asker.
Um, Fidel, have you ever read babble before?
Fine. Be like that. See if I care. Just wait till you want something from me though. Humph.
Don't be too sure, I may be playing the long game, and could be pretending to be an 'Asker', it would be the best cover there is, eh..... ;)
One time I did one of those character analysis thingies, and the person conducting the testing, was shocked, I tell you shocked, at the findings, as she had me figured for a pessimistic introvert...whilst the actual findings were for an optimistic extrovert.
And as a public health nurse for our small community she thought she "knew" everyone. :D
I try to encourgare students to be askers with their professors. The worst that can happen is the answer is "no" perpetuating the status quo.
Well, that and it's a bit much to expect a prof with numerous students to psychically determine what it is you want from him or her... I think being an extreme guesser could be passive aggressive, although not necessarily. My MIL is nearly incapable of asking for something outright and also nearly incapable of saying a simple thank-you (too busy going on about how you shouldn't have). It's exhausting. But I do know some indirect people who aren't aggressive at all - but they still require extra time and energy to cooperate with, and I don't always have the time, energy or patience to do it well.
Re: Tommy's interpretation that Askers are "takers" - yes and no. I don't think it's that clear cut. I find that Askers are often fine with giving, provided you don't expect them to guess what it is you're after. And as an Asker myself, I cooperate excellently with others. I just make sure we set out the ground rules in an obvious way, having wound up in situations where assumptions were made as givens and then resentment ensued when they weren't understood.
I do agree that many women tend to the Guess side... That's a frustration I often have with other women.
Sometimes I am frustrated, other times I am amused...
My adopted mother, is very accomplished at guessing, in fact so much so, that in 2 sentences, with nary a question, just a commuity gossip session, 'allegedly', she not only had secured my help in preparing food for a funeral reception, but an invite to Easter dinner at my house, which I had not planned on having in the first and second place. Not being a Christian and all.
It was very delightful to see her shorthand it, as she knows I usually like direct....but she can never "ask" for anything, so I decided to be especially giving of my time and energy. ;)
A plus about perhaps being an asker, is that when a guesser is trying to get you to do something, you can pretend oblivian to the "guessing", even though ya know exactly what they want. And when that happens, I am thankful that that they are a guesser, as had they been a asker, I would have had a hard time saying NO directly.
Pretending to be oblivious, is so much easier than saying NO to a direct ask.
I'm a born guesser but I've worked hard to be an asker for most of my adult life. This makes it seem to me sometimes like I'm a fraudulent asker. That I "shoot from the hip" only in a theatrical sense. It also leads to inconsstent behaviour because sometimes I'll just be too overwhelmed in my day-to-day life to consciously "ask" so I revert to guessing.
I also kind of think that simplistic, reductive schematics like this one are bit dumb. Even when they're true.
Sort of like the world being divided into two types of people: Those who like categorization, and those who don't.
Funny, I find it harder to say no to Guessers than Askers. With Guessers, I don't always know the full implication of what they are indirectly asking for and find that I've agreed to far more than I thought I had, and then trying to limit my participation in whatever it is I'm supposed to do results in wounded feelings and me as the bad guy.
I've had to get a little brutal with my "no"s to Guessers in my life lately. They're not taking it kindly. Askers are much easier - a simple "No, that won't work for me" or "Sorry, can't, have other stuff on my plate" is usually sufficient and much less fraught.
I usually try to maker "guessers" ask by clarifying exactly what we are discussing.
Do not say "No", just pretend that I am oblivious that they are asking/suggesting anything, if I do not want to do it, or if I suspect it involves more than the circuitous presentation of "occuring events" being given.
...this only works with die hards who on't get frustrated with my oblivian, and then ask directly. If asked directlyfinally, and I want to do a small part, I detail what I am willing to commit to the endeavour.
Used to feel guilty about my "oblivian" disception, but I rationalized that guilt right out of the way by stating to self that I did not want to be passive aggressived into anything and was just giving it back at them.
Now I know that it is "hard wired", so to speak, perhaps I should rethink that approach though, as it is the way that they are....hmmmmm...damn you catchfire, for bringing this to our attention. ;)
Ohh, a dualism! My guess is that there is some hypertheorizing and categorizing going on here!
You can put me down for 'wanker' (in the British sense).
I don't buy that it is hard-wired; I think it is socialization.
There seems a bit of an undercurrent here suggesting that this is all about aggression and how it's expressed. To oversimplify, maybe: Askers are directly aggressive and Guessers are passive aggressive.
That is just not my experience of either group. I know Askers who are just like open-faced sandwiches, not aggressive at all, just blissfully happy about their right to be here, as it were, sometimes maybe kind of unaware of the complications that others live with, but that's ok with them, so it's ok by me since they don't seem to react to No with resentment. I also know lots of Guessers who are just sweet people who are seriously not asking for anything, not directly or indirectly. They're often older, a little puzzled by a culture that has come to value assertiveness more than they were used to, but they're not complaining. Sometimes, sadly, they're withdrawing, but they're sure not aggressive in any way.
There are Askers, though, who turn vengeful when they get a No; I mean, I don't think anyone would mistake Dick Cheney for a Guesser, ditto Stephen Harper. As for passive aggression, I think that's still a form of Asking. It doesn't mean just being nice, ducking confrontation, which seems to be the way a lot of people understand the expression nowadays. It means disguised aggression, an attempt to force a response from someone else while pretending not to. Maybe some Guessers do that, although I'm tempted to say that they turn into Askers when they do.
And now my head hurts.
I don't think aggression is inherent in either position, but no, if the person is not asking directly but implying with the intent to provoke an offer, that's Guessing behaviour. It doesn't make you an Asker. I would postulate that assholes come in both asking and guessing varieties.
There are whole cultures where "asking" is the norm. I'm don't think it's right to categorize them all as passive-aggressive!
No one is, I personally am categorizing some guessers as passive aggressive. Or rather I did.
askers, are just outright assertive, or on the sliding scale to aggression, just as guessers are from diplomatic to passive aggressive
I am definitely an asker. My partner is definitely a guesser. This explains so many of our misunderstandings!
I think the passive aggressive for guessers would likely come into play when it is not just a request that is being asked but there are other strings attached other than the request (for instance saying I would love to see your place, it sounds so big - if it was purely a request and was given a no and dropped it would be fine but if attached to it was if you don't invite me over you are rejecting me and I will think you don't want to be my friend).
I don't mind people who are guessers of the first variety - they just ask in different ways and if they accept an answer I am fine. But it's harder dealing with the requests of people who ask about one thing but actually mean another.