The American south has a very distinct attitude towards guests. Very hospitable. That’s the difference in his case.

You make it sound like they do it out of the kindness of their hearts when they allegedly do it out of anxiety and self doubt

I generally agree. A lot of contradictory statements and I would only add to that. I feel like people tend to pigeonhole each region in the US, the US itself, and indeed any other country into what “people act like”. There might be a common thread that is statistical but it’s not monolithic in any sense. Micro cultures exist and interplay with the macro culture especially in a networked world.

Well the article we're commenting on claims it's also an East vs West thing, and that Asians are "deeply in guess culture". Which, if you know Mainland China only a little you'll know isn't a thing, because in China it's not uncommon for people to make the most outrageous requests without breaking a sweat. Which in turn is seen as embarrassing or rude by some other Chinese. That may be much less common in Japan, where people are obsessed with etiquette. But then the author should say it's a part of Japanese culture, not Asian culture.

All this seems like good old stereotyping to me. It often comes down to the individual family or even the individual person. Maybe their social skills, maybe their level of selfishness. Maybe also how much they care about how they're seen by others vs how comfortable they are being themselves. A lot of factors can play into this.

Well in Romanian there's a saying: "Stupid's not the one who asks", implying that the gullible "guess" who gives into the shameless unreasonable request is the sucker. Implying that although "guess" culture is the expected civilized social norm, it's usually it's brazen antagonist that propels your interests forward.

Do you not see how that attitude is totally selfish, and in practice comes across that way no matter where you’re from.

Treat everyone, no matter who they are, like someone you admire and you can’t go wrong anywhere in the world.

This and other comments here resonate a lot. My SO is unlikely to ask for anything if there's even a small chance of getting a negative answer, and I'm basically the opposite. If this difference really is common, wouldn't it explain a large part of the salary and position discrepancies between the sexes? That is, someone who asks for an improvement to their contract once they are 50% sure of getting it versus someone who only asks when they are at least 80% sure are going to have very different careers, right? Especially if their superiors are usually of the same background.

I don't know. I know men who act like your SO.

But that wouldn’t explain why men generally tend to go hard or die trying whereas women are, if you ask me, more clever on average and collaborate with other people. My current theory it’s related to the dating statistics. Dating is a power law for men, albeit more suppressed when polygamy is banned. A few great men will get all the mates whereas most get none. For women, it’s more equal. So men realize that they must excel or have no mate, which leads to extreme behaviour: sometimes extremely "good" (e.g., founder of S&P company) and sometimes extremely bad (e.g., robbing bank). That would explain why most CEOs are male, but also why most criminals are male.

> I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion.

When you make a huge generalization like "the northern states I'm from primarily developed their culture from Scandinavia and Germany and tend to be more 'ask' than 'guess'", it's possible to immediately find tons of counterexamples. It tends to make people feel good to find flaws with generalizations, but they then argue too far the other way. "Since there are many counterexamples, your claim that the North is mostly 'ask' and the South is mostly 'guess' doesn't hold water."

But what exactly are they saying? The Northern US and the Southern US are exactly the same? There's no possible generalization to make about the cultures from either place?

Instead, at every possible delineation people have made in their counterarguments (poor vs. rich, urban vs. rural, man vs. woman), I find the same generalizations mostly apply. A poor northerner is likely more "ask" than a poor southerner, based on who I've met. Northern men are generally more "ask" than southern men. My wife's father is certainly less intensely curious about my needs than my own mother, but he's far, far more curious about my needs than my father, and almost every other northern father I've met. I've met a great many people, and lived all around the US, so I'm not just shooting from the hip here.