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btrettel comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
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Given the importance of communication style in interpersonal relationships, I am looking to create an OkCupid question to determine if someone is an asker/teller or guesser. I'm having difficulty creating an unbiased question. Any way I've written the question makes ask/tell seem obviously better, e.g., here are two possibilities:
When you want someone to do something for you, do you prefer to ask them directly or do you prefer to mention something related and expect that they infer what you want?
Should your partner "just know" what you want without you ever saying so explicitly?
That perception might just be my own bias. Quite a few people I know would probably answer #2 as yes.
Unfortunately, this question probably won't be answered very often, so it's also useful to look for a proxy. Vaniver suggested a question about gifts when I mentioned this at a meetup, and I believe he meant the question "How often should your significant other buy you gifts, jewelry, or other things more expensive than, say, dinner, cards, or flowers?" This question is a reasonable proxy because many guessers I know seem to expect people to "just know" what sort of gifts are appropriate for them. Unfortunately, many guessers might not care that someone buys things for them with any regularity.
Another possibility is "Imagine that a friend asks you to read a short story they wrote. Unfortunately, you find it to be very boring. Which is closest to how you might respond when they ask you what you think of it?" I think that indirectly gets to the core of the ask vs. guess issue. Saying negative things is considered inappropriate to most guessers. Any other potential proxy questions?
Possibly insurmountable problem is that loads of people want to think that they are Tell or at least Ask but in practice they are actually Guess and you have no way of filtering for this. In my experience people are extremely bad at knowing "how they are" relative to other people.
Perhaps the questions should give concrete scenarios. Something like
and
I suspect this works best if you avoid priming the test subjects on what they're going to be tested on, otherwise I think they will expend effort to seem extra-reasonable contra their natural impulse.
But, yes, good idea, I was way too quick to call it an insurmountable problem.
I would use "Do you prefer to explain everything you want to your partner explicitly, or do you prefer that they infer some of your desires from your implicit suggestions?" as well as "Is it OK to turn down an explicit request by your partner if you're capable of fulfilling it but you don't want to?"
I might also use the reversed versions: "Do you prefer to have everything explained to you explicitly, or do you prefer some things be left for you to infer from context?" and "Is it OK for your partner to turn down your explicit request if they're capable of fulfilling it but don't want to?"
I think you might need both variants because if I were to answer such questions, the response would not necessarily be symmetrical;
(assuming reasonable requests)
Postel Culture FTW! ;-)
(nods) That's why I mentioned them; I think that kind of assymetry is common for a lot of people, especially those who were raised in a high-context (aka "Guess") culture but then migrated to a low-context (aka "Ask") culture.
This sounds like a feature, not a bug.
Not if you want the question to actually be accepted for use on the site.
Ah. For some reason I thought it was a freeform question to be put to those potentially interested. (I don't actually know anything about OKC)
I'd hedge in the 'all the time' and 'never' to include 'nearly' variants of each.
And I'd split the “Sometimes” into “Often” and “Rarely”, otherwise a supermajority of people would just pick the middle answer (and also, ISTM that “how often” questions on OKC usually have four possible answers).
Great comment. I think your latter question is excellent, though I'm not sure that "drop hints" is the best way to describe guessing. I'll think about what might be better.
You could further simplify it to "How often do you directly ask for what you want?" -Almost Never, I hate asking for things, - Sometimes bla bla bla, - Almost always, clear communication bla bla bla
Also, some people take things really literally, so I'd take LukeASomers' advice and add the "almost" hedges
I think you are making assumptions that might be hard justify:
-people have the self-knowledge to answer this question effectively -people are not gaming the answer to seem appealing -people can accurately identify their preferences about what type of communication style works for them
Don't mean to sound like a downer--I'm glad some people take this seriously. I think trying to produce questions like these is a good idea, I'm trying to point out some potential flaws to help.
I appreciate the help. These assumptions can be problematic, but they are problems for all online dating, not my specific question. In my experience, OkCupid question responses are not always accurate, but they are more than accurate enough to be useful.
I think what happens to be guessing depends a lot on the understanding that you have between two people.
I don't really think in terms of acting in a way that get's another person to take a specific action. I focus more on giving the person all relevant information and expect the other person to take the action that maximizes utility.
If I ask Alice to dance Salsa and she needs a break I don't want Alice to come dancing with me. I want Alice to act according to her feelings and take the break. I can ask Carol who might actually want to dance at that moment and ask Alice later. I can also spent some time meditating if there no woman who wants to dance at a particular moment around. I'm not attached to a particular action of another person.
On the other hand if the person doesn't engage in an action that maximizes utility to make a point of signaling status or to punish that can annoy me.
Depending on how well I know the position of the other person and how well I know what's right for myself I might just say what I feel or I might be very explicit about a possible solution.
Shyness can also hold me back from sharing certain information. It can be hard to articulate deep feelings in an environment where that's not normal behavior. I'm still quite bad at talking about feelings in a Salsa environment where I might ask a woman to dance very directly but rely a lot on nonverbal signs to regulate the level of intimacy of a dance. Openly saying something to an attractive woman like: "It feels a bit strange when you dance closely with me because you are tense and don't relax the way I would expect you to if you enjoy dancing close." is very hard.
If you hear me talk with my meditation teacher you probably would not understand what's said because the conversation heavily relies on implicit assumptions. On the other hand I have a hard time calling it guess culture because we both understand each other perfectly well.
The whole idea of guessing assumes that there's doubt whether the other person understands the point you want to make.
I think part of having a good intimate relationship with another person is that you have a good idea of what the other person wants without them saying so explicitly. On the other hand having a good intimate relationship also means that you can explicitly communicate your desires in cases where the other person doesn't pick them up on their own.
I think both of the question you mention tell you something about the other person. The goal of a good question isn't to be without bias but to provide a clear signal. Someone who says that they prefer to mention something related and expect the other person to infer what they want is a clear guess culture person in every sense of the word.
This is more accurately described as the difference between high context and low context cultures. This might actually be some sort of precursor to ask vs. guess culture.
Ask this: "Name some things your partner can do to make you feel appreciated." If the person answers the question at all and does so in a useful way, that should tell you something about their communication style.
That would be a good way to determine someone's communication style, but unfortunately that question is too open ended for OkCupid. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the site. "Questions" on there refer to a set of questions with specific answers, exactly like those in this comment.
Ah, I see. So we're looking for a multiple choice question to test whether someone is willing to volunteer unsolicited information.