Cold and Warm Cultures
Maybe a term for this dichotamy already exists elsewhere, but I haven’t heard it yet and have found my own term for it super useful, so here we go:
Cold Culture examples
Highly efficient in small things
Knows how much time is worth, e.g. might consciously spend no more than 1 minute selecting a grocery product with a price difference lower than a dollar
Libertarian-esque; pays attention to system efficiency, not what ‘feels good’
Willing to use money to incentivize things in their personal life, e.g. “if you figure out my emotional issue I’ll pay you 1k” or “paying a roommate to do chores for you”
More risk-tolerant; likely to view downsides or problems as sometimes being worthwhile tradeoffs
More likely to place responsibility inside the self; views others as ultimately not responsible for your well being
Less likely to parse things as exploitation or manipulation; views additional choices as non-coercive (e.g., a new employer offering well below minimum wage is not viewed as exploitative)
Donates to efficient charities; utilitarian
Ask culture: a frame where people should ask directly for what they want with the expectation that the askee will say no if they don’t want to
High decoupling
Destination over the journey
Warm Culture examples
More attention to the subjective, emotive, connective world
More disgust sensitive (more likely to resist things that trigger moral disgust, such as homosexuality or sex work. this is highly relative to culture)
Persuaded by sense of fairness
Distrusts conscious signaling as manipulative; e.g., really hates pickup artistry because it’s making deliberate something that is otherwise organic and intuitive
Wary of manipulation in general; more likely to perceive manipulation as genuinely subverting individual agency
Perceives responsibility as resting more outside the self or diversified; others can be responsible for your well being
Views some voluntary options as coercive or exploitative; e.g. less likely to allow a rich private individual to pay voluntary minority groups to get sterilized
Naturalistic and community oriented
Dislikes advertising and capitalism
Guess culture: a frame where there can be harm in asking for things because of implicit pressure for the askee to agree even if they don’t want to
Low decoupling
Journey over the destination
I know this list covers many clear dichotomies already (ask vs guess culture, or right vs left brain), but I have kept wanting a more general term that covers a lot of these feelings. I keep saying “that sounds like a cold culture thing” in conversation and then feeling awkward I don’t have a longer post to refer to, so here it is finally.