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Kenoubi comments on Mental Metadata - Less Wrong
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I naturally give way more detail (especially qualifiers) than most people want in most situations. I can correct it somewhat in email (by revising; I can't omit unneeded detail without writing it out to see which parts are unneeded) although it takes much longer than just giving the detail. In a realtime conversation I'm not sure, although it's probably less bad because of the tighter feedback loop.
It sounds like you're saying this is a general phenomenon; do you have a cite, or is this based on personal experience?
Interestingly, I have to force myself to write out descriptive details when writing a narrative. Which means it's the kind of information, not just the amount. So maybe it's more linked to this article than you seem to be thinking?
Personal experience. I tend to like hearing less detail than people want to give, and it's difficult to get them to summarize.
People don't generally ask me to change my detail level-- I don't know whether I'm in a sweet spot, the tolerable range, or (as I strongly suspect) most people are much more inhibited about asking for a different detail level than I am.
If you ever figure out any tricks to get others to change, I'd be interested - I run in to the same problem :)
Conversely, I do get a fair number of requests to change my own detail level: I tend to strongly encourage people to ask for elaboration as needed, so I do get a fair number of "requests for additional detail". And occasionally I'll have someone cut me off for having answered a question they didn't intend (i.e. "I meant, what color is it?"). I've found demonstrating positive/happy body language in these situations, and verbally reinforcing that I like this, has made people do that more often.
It may also be a specific, rather than a general inhibition: if someone responded to me in a way that made me believe they wanted less detail than I was providing, I would not be inclined to ask them for more details about their answers even if I wanted more information than that in general.