I have naturally low Latency of Verbal Response, and was raised in the intersection of several cultures where the normative LVR was negative (that is, you're expected to start replying just before the other person finishes).

When I experienced minor aphasia due to brain trauma, my LVR ballooned astronomically. This made it impossible to talk to some people... but it also revealed to me that several people I'd known for years and thought of as "quiet" were more than happy to talk to me at length and actually had quite a bit to say.

Since then, I've made more of a conscious effort to do some initial "handshaking" in conversations to work out what someone's natural LVR is, and to match it. (I often fail, but I do try.) I encourage it as a way of expressing interest in what someone has to say, if nothing else.

I attended a group discussion in regard to religion and ethics where there were very firm rules about how interaction could take place. No interrupting, no cross-talk, people's statement's were timed with a little hourglass and all took less than 60 seconds... I think (if I recall correctly) they even had a "talking-item" which you had to have in your hand in order to speak. When we read over the rules at the beginning of the discussion, I remember rolling my eyes and thinking, "Seriously? We are all adults... Can't we just have a discussion without all these rules? This is silly & infantile..."

The discussion was awesome. One of the most productive and interesting discussions I can remember. The rules, with no excepetion, were strictly but politely enforced. It felt silly at first, and then increasingly natural. I listened much more intently to other perspectives than I regularly do. I re-thought and chose to refrain from making statements I normally would have made. It was cool, and I'd say the Wait Culture worked that day.

I've been an 'interrupter'. I like to talk. And I enjoy heated debate. But I've been persuaded it is very unlikely to be the most produc... (read more)

I've always found interrupt mode incredibly frustrating to deal with, because it takes me longer to come up with appropriate responses than most people's Maximum Wait Time, and by the time a monologue is finished, whatever I thought of is no longer on-topic. I do find it interesting that you associate interruption with nerddom, though. As a tech geek, interruption is a Very Bad Thing because it disrupts mental state. If I want someone's attention, I stand near them, look attentive, and wait for them to swap out. I expect others to do the same. Sometimes I have to ask. But I don't think I've had anyone competent refuse to wait or express confusion about why.

It's possible nerd communities make a distinction between work-interruption and conversation-interruption. Most of my communication is textual so I may not have noticed. One of the things I've always loved about communication on the Internet is that interruption is effectively impossible; both parties can get their say without being dependent on the other party to shut up for a moment.

I grew up in a wait culture, and it's really hard for me to talk when interruption is the norm. I've had to deliberately force myself to interrupt people, which is really uncomfortable. If I'm not feeling comfortable already, I just won't really say anything unless asked a question directly. I would really like to experience a wait culture again. I should probably try to improve my skill at talking and making myself heard in an interrupt culture though. Any advice for this?

At one organization I work with we mostly have a 'wait' culture, and it is socially enforced, since we have recognized that many of our members are 'waiters' and will not speak if interrupters do not give them a chance.

With more than 3-4 people we use several hand signals to facilitate conversation. We have the usual raised hand to speak next, but we also have a separate gesture for 'I have a direct response to what you just said', which takes priority over raised hands. It works as a 'soft interrupt', and it is up to the current speaker to let the interrupter speak. The interrupter can usually communicate how urgent/important they think their interruption is through body language. Now when the conversation gets heated we have people gesturing hard at each other instead of shouting. I think it does improve the quality of conversations.

We also have a gesture for 'I agree with this', and a gesture for meta-communication. The 'meta' gesture has absolute priority and is used for things like bringing the conversation back on tracks at meetings, or to remind people to follow the conversation rules. We usually don't need a designated moderator as we moderate each other and enforce the norms with the 'meta' signal'.

I've found this system improves the quality and productivity of our group conversations and I've found myself getting frustrated in other groups who don't use hand signals.

My sympathies are mostly with interrupt culture, because I find it hugely uncomfortable to have confusions or arguable points or whatever just sitting there, in the past, while the conversation meanders away and thoughts on the past topics dissolve - I have zero "trust" of the kind described in the OP. But in groups larger than three, interruption attempts can turn into multiple simultaneous threads of conversation and I don't have the audio processing capacity to manage that on most days. So then I have to ratchet up the interruption and shout over everyone to pare it down to one thread (with some overlap/interruption, but between tracks that respond to each other, not that are carried on independently and adjacently). I did this just a few hours ago with my dinner party guests.

Now, I’ve praised the virtues of wait culture because I think it’s undervalued, but there’s plenty to say for interrupt culture as well. For one, it’s more robust in “unwalled” circumstances. If there’s no one around to enforce wait culture norms, then a few jerks can dominate the discussion, silencing everyone else. But someone who doesn’t follow “interrupt” norms only silences themselves.

I'm not sure this is necessarily true.

I've found hat, where "interrupt" norms hold sway, a few jerks can STILL dominate the discussion, by interrupting everyone else and speaking loudly and aggressively enough that no one can successfully interrupt them back. If, when someone interrupts you, you simply keep talking as if they aren't even there, and you have the right body language and voice projection tricks to make the rest of the audience keep listening to you and ignore the re-interrupter, you've won.

I think the culture is one variable. Context is another. They can interact in interesting ways. This was brought home to me in a specific way.

I am a lawyer by trade. I was representing a client in a complex contract negotiation with a Navajo business (and quasi-governmental) entity. My client hadn't seemed to be making much headway, despite lots of negotiation. When I joined the negotiation, I figured out what was going on.

My client interpreted a long pause in discussion as a signal that the proposal was not well received. That was consistent with his experience in the business world: if someone makes a horribly embarrassing proposal, it is polite to pause long enough for them to save face by way of qualification or limited retraction.

A pause among the Navajo is just polite. I subsequently found a study that backs this up (with the significant qualifier of a very small sample size). The normal pause to signal swapping of turns in a discussion is around 4 to 6 seconds among the Navajo subjects in the study, while it is around 1 second for "Anglos" in the literature reviewed in that study.

So my client was negotiating against himself. He would propose something. His Navajo c... (read more)

This is interesting, and seems similar to the issue of ask v. guess, which can create similar problems due to cultural differences.

I'm guessing that if possible, these modes should be chosen depending on the situation. Waiting seems better when discussing something in a group where several people often have something to say at the same time, as a kind of scheduling algorithm to improve fairness and give structure to navigate a more complicated conversation (and control its complexity). A norm that you can interrupt, but only rarely, can rescue a discussion with many participants from this mode. Interrupting seems better when only a few people are interacting, so that there is a more e... (read more)

If you know sign language, instead of interrupting the person you can quickly comment something they says (eg. I have a question OR I disagree OR I understand) without interrupting them. Then they can either let you talk, or finish saying what they are saying (if they judge it's better to do so) but at least they'll know what your reply will be about.

This is not an observation, but a proposition. I'm still not good at sign language.

Networking protocols face similar challenges. I wonder if there's a rationality of conversation hidden somewhere in here?

This seems good enough for Main.