= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Lumifer comments on Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (302)
To the old ask and guess thread: I grew up under the impression it is a gender thing.
My mother would be "guess", she would expect me to notice that the thrash needs taking out, I didn't because I was lazy, and then she did it and acted hurt and told me she is tired of always needing to tell me to do my share of housework, she rather does it herself but she was bitter and hurt.
In the occasional cases she was ill and my father had to give a damn about the housework (in his defense he tended to have 10-11 hour workdays, mother was at home, so it made sense not to), he would do it in the clearly "tell" style of military training sergeants, "get that effing thrash out but on the double you got five effing seconds to finish it", that kind of style, however he was NEVER angry or hurt about this, he actually looked amused and having fun during that verbal rudeness, I think he always thought if you order people do things and they do them on the bounce, then things are right even if you need to give that order every day: you just tell it ruder and ruder until they learn, easy enough.
While I know ask and guess cultures exist in general, for me it got really tied up with gender. I think as my father always had employees, often stupid ones, and had to play boss all the time, he simply did not mind being a boss even if it meant telling the same things all over. It is repetitive but maybe it always gives a bit of power trip feeling. And it matched nicely with the generally patriarchial social model. I think my mother felt she does not really have the power to enforce her wishes, and this is why she wanted us to take them to the heart and remember what she asked and not have to tell it over and over because really ignoring her wishes, to her, felt like a real possibility. I think she hated repeating them because she felt it could one day come to that that she tells it again and then my or dad refuse it outright and then she has no more recourses. She thought, and correctly, that if we really loved her we would remember what she asks. Having to guilt-tripped into pulling my share was probably a correctly identified lack of care on my side and maybe she was correct that I may not have been very far from outright refusal.
That's pretty classical passive-aggressive behaviour. I don't think it has much to do with guess-vs-ask cultures.
But I agree that there is probably some gender correlation.
It seems plausible that Hint cultures lead to passive aggression-- if you can't be just plain aggressive, what have you got left?
I think power imbalance leads to passive aggression much more than the Hint or Ask character of the culture.
Hint and Ask are basically preferred communication protocols and most Hint people I know will adjust if the hints are clearly not working. But there is a big difference between
and
But that is largely the same thing. The classical boss-subordinate relationship is ask (order) down, guess up. Passive-aggression is extreme (angry, upset) guess, active aggression is extreme (angry, upset) ask/order.
When whole cultures are all-ask or all-guess that is probably a sign of egalitarianism - within that subset.
It's more complicated. Ask/tell is simpler, faster, and more efficient so in the workplace (where status and power relationships are largely formalized) it tends to dominate anyway.
Also, as anecdata, I know a girl who is a very pronounced Hint/Guess person, but she's a manager and has underlings. She quite successfully manages them mostly on the Hint/Guess basis (within reason, of course).
Yes, but passive-aggression is what guess-people do when upset, and active-aggression is what ask-people do when upset.
I don't know if I am willing to accept it as a such tight relation. For one thing, being passive-aggressive is usually not one particular action, an outburst when upset, it's more like a an attitude, a continuous inclination/slant/flavour.
I think that passive vs. active aggression depends much more on power, status, and specific circumstances rather than on usually preferred communication styles.
The idea that there's a gender correlation, whether for cultural or biological reasons certainly is something I've seen a fair bit when this comes up as a subject. See for example here. This one where cultural distinctions are going to be very difficult since some cultures (e.g. China) are so heavily on one side. It would I think be very interesting to see if the obvious gender trend in the West still is true in those extreme examples- it would be pretty strong evidence of a biological basis.
In a way the gender aspect could be seen as a micro culture thing as women operating in their own social circles build up these sub-protocols (influenced due to power structures of ourse).