Askers vs. Guessers

From the article This column will change your life by Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian):

“[…] 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.”

Though the terminology is new, the concept is old hat to an ex-pat who moved from an Asking society (the U.S.) to a Guessing society (Switzerland). It neatly explains the seemingly large cultural gap between these superficially very similar Western societies. For Switzerland, even the neighbor to the North (Germany; Askers) boasts commuters who constantly strain the poor Guessers to the South with their brashness. U.S. ex-pats have, unsurprisingly, far fewer problems with their forthrightness and, in fact, welcome it as a refreshing change from the swamp of constant Guessing.