I don’t perceive Ask vs Guess as a dichotomy at all. IMO, like almost every social, psychological, and cultural trait, it exists on a continuum. The number of echoes tracked may correlate with but does not predict Ask vs Guess. Guess cultures tend to be high-context, homogeneous, and collectivist with tight norms, but none of these traits is dichotomous either.
My own culture leans mostly toward Asking, but it’s not a matter of not caring or being unaware of echoes so much as an expectation of straightforward communication. I don’t ask for unreasonable things. I do ask for reasonable things with the understanding that people don’t like saying no, but aren’t obligated to say yes. The more demanding the ask, the more I consider the social implications. There is a cost to asking or being asked, but that’s the expected way to communicate.
IMO, like almost every social, psychological, and cultural trait, it exists on a continuum.
For natural predispositions, I’m sure that’s true; but to the extent that the trait is a result of learning / training / experience / habit, it’s quite possible for there to be effects that push it towards one extreme or another, resulting in a bimodal distribution.
A category that comes to mind is, if there’s a behavior that people have some normally-distributed natural inclination towards, but is suppressed in most of society, and if there’s a place where that behavior is relatively unsuppressed, then (to the extent that the behavior is important to them) the people with a strong inclination to do it will move to that location, and that place will probably end up tolerating or even supporting it more, and this positive feedback loop can iterate. If the result is stable, then it might form what you could call a culture.
I don’t ask for unreasonable things. I do ask for reasonable things with the understanding that people don’t like saying no, but aren’t obligated to say yes. The more demanding the ask, the more I consider the social implications. There is a cost to asking or being asked, but that’s the expected way to communicate.
I think you’re much closer to the-thing-people-have-chosen-to-cluster-under-the-label-guess culture than you think! This is pretty close to a description of basic guess culture perspective, with the main asky part just being an acknowledgement that people aren’t obligated to say yes.
(I will note, in agreement with you, that Ask/Guess is not a true dichotomy, and that the above is evidence in favor of that.)
I don’t perceive Ask vs Guess as a dichotomy at all. IMO, like almost every social, psychological, and cultural trait, it exists on a continuum. The number of echoes tracked may correlate with but does not predict Ask vs Guess. Guess cultures tend to be high-context, homogeneous, and collectivist with tight norms, but none of these traits is dichotomous either.
My own culture leans mostly toward Asking, but it’s not a matter of not caring or being unaware of echoes so much as an expectation of straightforward communication. I don’t ask for unreasonable things. I do ask for reasonable things with the understanding that people don’t like saying no, but aren’t obligated to say yes. The more demanding the ask, the more I consider the social implications. There is a cost to asking or being asked, but that’s the expected way to communicate.
For natural predispositions, I’m sure that’s true; but to the extent that the trait is a result of learning / training / experience / habit, it’s quite possible for there to be effects that push it towards one extreme or another, resulting in a bimodal distribution.
A category that comes to mind is, if there’s a behavior that people have some normally-distributed natural inclination towards, but is suppressed in most of society, and if there’s a place where that behavior is relatively unsuppressed, then (to the extent that the behavior is important to them) the people with a strong inclination to do it will move to that location, and that place will probably end up tolerating or even supporting it more, and this positive feedback loop can iterate. If the result is stable, then it might form what you could call a culture.
I think you’re much closer to the-thing-people-have-chosen-to-cluster-under-the-label-guess culture than you think! This is pretty close to a description of basic guess culture perspective, with the main asky part just being an acknowledgement that people aren’t obligated to say yes.
(I will note, in agreement with you, that Ask/Guess is not a true dichotomy, and that the above is evidence in favor of that.)