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The life-changing magic of knowing whether people are 'Askers' or 'Guessers'

Photo by Eunice Lituañas on Unsplash

My husband and I own a short-term rental, and last year a woman rented it for a couple of months straight. She was friendly, personable, and overall a lovely guest. But she asked for things, a lot. Like, all the time. Big things, little things—it seemed like pretty much anything she thought she could possibly ask for, she asked for.

My husband, who manages the property and requests from guests, found himself getting irritated that she was asking for so many things.

"I don't think she expects you to actually say yes to all of these things," I finally told him. "I think she's just an extreme asker."

He looked puzzled. That's when I pulled up this Atlantic article I'd read years ago about how some people are "Askers" and some people are "Guessers" and read it to him.

"Wow," he said after I finished. "That is seriously life-changing."

"Life-changing" is how practically I share this concept with describes it once they understand it. When you hear it explained, it seems so obvious, but it's not something people articulate often.

It's also not particularly scientific. The original Askers vs. Guessers explanation appears to have come from someone's AskMetafilter answer in 2007, but it's since been expanded and expounded upon by various people throughout the years.

Here's the gist of it:

Some people are Askers, and in "ask culture," it's normal and expected to ask directly for the things you want. It's also normal to say no to such requests. Asking culture is upfront, direct, and generally okay with saying no and being told no. If you want something, you simply ask for it without an expectation of any particular answer.

Other people are Guessers, and in "guess culture," you don't ask for things unless you're quite sure the answer will be yes. You might drop hints or make vague allusions to what you want as you try to gauge whether the person would say yes, or even to get an offer without having to ask. If you think the answer might be no, you simply don't ask.

Where Askers and Guessers clash the most is in the saying no part. Askers know sometimes the answer will be no, but they ask anyway. Because Guessers won't ask if the answer might be no, they might assume Askers expect all of their asks to be answered with yes. Saying no is uncomfortable to a Guesser, so being put into the position of having to say no to someone's ask feels rude.

I've had coworkers, family members, and friends say this concept totally changed the way they see and interact with people. Guessers tend to struggle with the bluntness of Askers and feel put off by their directness until they understand that Askers always just ask—the answer doesn't always have to be yes. Askers tend to struggle with the seeming passive aggressiveness of Guessers and get frustrated by their pussyfooting until they understand that asking directly feels rude to them—Guessers just hate putting people in a position of saying "no."

Much has been made about whether Asking vs. Guessing is a family upbringing thing, a cultural thing, or a personality thing, and also about whether one is better than the other. Certainly, some cultures around the world tend to be more direct, while others tend to be less so. The same goes for families, and even certain regions of the country. In my experience as an American, I'd say the U.S. is fairly evenly split between the two tendencies.

Of course, people don't always fit neatly into two distinct categories, and th e relationship we have with people can impact all of this greatly. With people we are close to, we might be more of an Asker than with people we don't know all that well. But overall, understanding the difference between Askers and Guessers can make social situations so much easier to navigate.

For example, let'ss ay you have a coworker who constantly seems to be asking for things or throws ideas your way all the time. They're probably an Asker. They don't necessarily expect you to act on all of their ideas or say yes to what they're asking for. Or let's say you have a neighbor who starts talking about their vacation plans and mentions they're worried about their plants not getting enough water while they're gone. They might be a Guesser who wants to ask you to water for them. They just don't want to ask you directly.

The woman who rented our place was an extreme example of an Asker, and after my husband (who is a Guesser) got that, he found it so much easier to interact with her. He understood she wasn't expecting a yes with every ask, so her questions didn't feel so rude. And sure enough, when he was clear about what we could and couldn't accommodate, she was totally unfazed by the things he said no to.

Life-changing, seriously.

From Your Site Articles

Can we please stop treating extroversion as the default and introversion as a defect?

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

As we all know, there's a wide range of personalities out there. Some of us have tons of friends and acquaintances and love to spend our free time socializing. Some of us have a cadre of companions, but prefer cuddling up on the couch with a cup of tea and our own company. Many of us find ourselves somewhere in between, enjoying spending time with other humans and also needing our alone time.

We've come up with labels for these different personalities—the social butterflies are extroverts, the social hermit crabs are introverts, and those who flip back and forth are ambiverts. Extroverts get their energy from being around other people. Introverts charge their batteries in solitude. Ambiverts need both.

There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these personality traits, of course. People are who they are. Where we run into trouble is when extroverts are portrayed as the default or ideal, and introverts are seen as defective.

This is what happens. All. The. Time.

Let's say your friends invite you to go out on Friday night, but you're wiped out from a week of people-ing. You don't want to disappoint anyone, but you'd honestly rather sit at home and watch a movie by yourself. You might be open to inviting one good friend who you know won't talk during the film, but that's it. Going out to socialize with a bunch of people—even people you know and love and enjoy spending time with—just sounds draining.

RELATED: 10 comics explain what it's really like to be an introvert.

That's a pretty standard introvert scenario, but it can cause consternation in extroverts who don't understand why going out isn't a stress release for everyone. Responses from "Is everything okay?" to "What's wrong with you?" get tossed at the person who feels fine but just needs some down time. No, I'm not depressed. No, I'm not mad at anyone. No, I don't hate people. I just need to be alone for a while to let my batteries recharge.

Part of the reason society automatically views introverted habits as problematic is because there is some overlap with habits of people experiencing depression or other mental health struggles. Isolating oneself can be a sign of something wrong, but that doesn't mean it automatically is.

And what's interesting is that we almost never see extroverted habits as signaling something wrong. Someone who goes out and socializes regularly is simply seen as fun and outgoing. Rarely do you see anyone say, "What's wrong with you that you don't want to be alone?" or "What feelings are you avoiding if you have to be around people all the time?" Our society values sociability and rewards extroverts—not only with opportunity (extroverts have a clear leg up when it comes to job interviews), but also with the emotional benefit of the doubt. Wanting to be around people is seen as healthy. Wanting to be alone is a seen as a warning sign.

— (@)

And then there's the emphasis—or overemphasis, perhaps—on talking in our society. Westerners value "speaking your mind" and the public sharing and debating of opinions has been a hallmark of Western civilization since ancient times. If you go out to any public place in the U.S., you'll see people talking—a lot.

People converse everywhere, of course, but a year of living in Japan showed me that being with other people doesn't automatically mean constant talking. In our culture, silence feels awkward and people feel the need to fill the empty space. In Japan, friends chat, but there's no weirdness in silence and no expectation of small talk with strangers or acquaintances.

Small is very much a part of American culture, but that doesn't mean it comes natural to all of us. For introverts, small talk is often painful, and can make us feel like we don't fit in within our own culture. But again, making small talk is valued as the norm and people who struggle with it are seen as defective. Nevermind that perfectly healthy people from other countries have to learn the art of American small talk, especially those who come from countries where it's not only uncommon, but inappropriate to chit chat about unimportant things.

RELATED: We Can't All Be Extroverts. Just Ask This Once Painfully Shy, Famous, Talented Introvert.

My introverted husband once took an Uber after a long day of working with people. He got a negative review from the driver, who simply wrote, "Not much of a conversationalist." This was a person my husband paid to drive him someplace—why the expectation of chattiness? I have no doubt that my husband was courteous—he's never not courteous—but he was quiet. And for wanting to sit in silence and think instead of shooting the breeze with a stranger he'd likely never see again, he was seen in a negative light.

Thankfully, awareness of the value introverts bring to society is slowly growing. There's no shortage of quippy memes and comics and tweets about #IntrovertLife. We have articles explaining how some habits of introverts can serve as healthy examples for everyone, as well as books like Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking."But we still have a ways to go in changing societal perceptions of extroverted vs. introverted tendencies.

Let's embrace the positive aspects of all personalities and honor what each individual brings to the table—even when that means a table for one.

From Your Site Articles

How I learned from my sister that standardized tests have nothing to do with real life.

My delightful sister, Annie — the Queen of Seeing Through B.S. — posted this image on Facebook the other day:

Image provided by Ben Thomas, used with permission.

Leaving aside what you may or may not like about this image itself, it made me wonder:

What do standardized tests actually tell us?

Here’s what my sister — who is now 28 — says:

"Dear 16-year-old Annie, you suck at standardized tests. In 10 years, no one will care, and your path in life will have nothing to do with your SAT score. Get graded now, and prove them wrong later."

Go, Annie.

My sister was always the social one.

While I was in my room with books as a kid, she was in hers with clothes in front of the mirror. When I was 12, I thought she was vapid and shallow.

What I didn’t realize is that she was systematically hypothesizing, testing, and analyzing what the Italians call la bella figura — the way she would present herself to the world. Her personal brand. She was doing this when she was 8. Younger, even.

Meanwhile, I invented imaginary continents, drew imaginary maps of them, populated them with imaginary cities full of imaginary people whose clothes and weapons I also drew, with elaborate ecosystems of fictional creatures whose life cycles I documented with all the loving detail of a field biologist.

Our home was 20 miles from the nearest significant town, and we were homeschooled.

We lived in a place called Wayside, Texas — except that there was no more Wayside, Texas. People abandoned the town back in the 1970s, leaving a dried-up ruin of concrete foundations and artifacts on which our brand-new house sat.

My hometown. Image provided by Ben Thomas, used with permission.

I used to have nightmares about running across those flat plains forever, getting nowhere. Sometimes I still have those dreams.

Every morning I’d wake up, microwave something for breakfast, and look over the index card that my mom had prepared with my assignments for the day: "Do math lesson 34. Do exercises 171 to 175 in English workbook. Read pp. 471–503 of history book."

12-year-old me would brew a nice cup of green tea and get down to business. Three or four hours later I’d be done, and I’d spend the rest of the afternoon designing my own role-playing games or digging up the archaeological ruins on our property or trying to learn to code in C++. Or watching music videos.

Annie on the other hand — let’s put the cards on the table: I thought she was dumb.

All day, she’d sit there with Mom, talking about her schoolwork.

She actually, physically asked questions when it was so much easier and faster to ask a book or the internet — not to mention that with books and the internet, you had direct access to the accumulated knowledge of 5,000 years of human memory. When you talked to Mom, you had access to — well — Mom. Annie also got very stressed when she had to take an exam.

This was another reason I thought Annie was dumb:

To achieve a "100" on an exam, I knew, all one had to do was create simple mnemonics, memorize the necessary information, then select the right answers on the exam. Or if it was an essay exam, just write the author’s arguments back to him or her in a slightly altered way. Simple. Like baking cookies.

Annie would cry about her exams, and I’d go up to my room, cranking up the Weezer or Chopin . I was certain nothing of value was transpiring in that pink, bookless wasteland of her room. She had so many stuffed animals they couldn’t fit on the bed.

Image via gfpeck/Flickr.

Now, everyone knows that when a kid arrays her stuffed animals on her bed and conducts a parliament with them, this is more than just play. This is the development of an important technology: the ability to infuse inanimate objects with aspects of one’s own consciousness, then interact with them to talk out a problem, wage battle among conflicting thought processes, or just shoot the shit with oneself. This process requires physical objects to which the consciousness-aspects can be assigned — it can’t be achieved within one’s own mind.

Thus, stuffed animals, dolls, action figures, fetishes, graven images and idols — they’re all essential tools for a person trying to work something out. Clothes can work that way too; the trying on of different personas. But I just didn’t see it that way then.

At some point in all this, Annie and I both took our standardized tests.

In America they call it the SAT, but it's basically the same everywhere: battalions of tiny ovals on white pages, questions about "If A is to B as B is to C, then what is the relationship of C to A?" and "Would you say this passage is more perspicacious or percipient?" and "If George the intern deposits $3,750 in his account, and that’s 25% of his intern salary, then how much is his monthly pay?"

Monsters is what they are.

Image via Butz.2013/Flickr.

Every kid fears them. Except for me for some reason. I asked Mom if I could take them early. She said, "Sure, why not." I took the SAT — which you take when you graduate high school — at age 12 and scored high enough to get into a university right then. I asked Mom if that meant I could skip the rest of school and go straight to a university. She said, "No, you are not going to a university at age 12." I was too angry to see the wisdom there.

Annie put her SAT off as long as she could.

She did not enjoy the exam nor was she especially proud of her scores. But she scored well enough to get into a respectable university, where she studied brand communications and marketing and social dynamics and all the stuff she always played at up in her room in front of that mirror.

She went to Manhattan to be an actress for a while, got a lot of roles but wasn’t into it, came back to Texas, bounced from one job to another, fell in love, bought a house, adopted a diverse cast of dogs, and found her way to a laid-back desk job where she feels at home.

As for me, I lost patience at age 16.

I typed up a five-page proposal in which I detailed the reasons I should be allowed to skip the rest of high school and go to a university. I presented binders containing this proposal to my parents, who caved.

Image via State Farm/Flickr.

I was the only 16-year-old freshman at Texas Tech University. The university paper did a feature about me. I studied Latin and spent most of my time in the university’s five-story library, which was my favorite place in the world. I didn’t really have any friends. Sometimes people let me hang out with them. Mostly I hung out in the library. Or in my room at my parents’ house after the 20-mile drive home.

When I was 17, I talked my parents into letting me drop out of the classics program at Texas Tech so I could go study film in Los Angeles.

A lot happened after that: I worked as a courier, and a receptionist, and a mailroom guy, and a checkout guy, and a mailroom guy again, and a government-check-collector for a few months when medical marijuana had just become legal, and holy cow, did I get good at Starcraft.

Somewhere in there, though, a realization was forming: What the people with money actually want is skills.

Image via Fredrik Rubensson/Flickr.

Like, oh my god, it’s all about the actual practical ability to do useful things for other human beings!

And as for the ability to pencil in little ovals on a sheet of cardstock that corresponds to accurately constructed metaphors and vocabulary definitions …

Well, the only guarantee for that ability is that it promises you a place using those same skills somewhere else, filling out similar little cards behind a desk in a little red building.

All it guarantees is a place where, if you’re lucky, some kid might dig those cards up from under the West Texas dirt someday and squint at the markings on them under the summer sun and wonder just what in the hell those little slips of paper were for anyway.