[mojed]

I guess your suggestion is a "find out where we're at" type of raise. I get the feeling these have gone out of fashion, nowadays people are more concerned about hand ranges.

If we put 14 dollars in now by raising, we are probably folding out the hands we beat, while the hands that have us beat remain. So we narrow the villain's range to hands we beat, if called, otherwise we win the pot. It's kinda WA/WB if we reraise.

If we call and villain bets 16, villain's range is wider, he could be double barreling with an underpair. We can call, and we've only invested 6 dollars more than we would have had we raised to 18 on the flop, but now we have a much greater chance of winning.