Question about human behavior

[Aedilred]

There are always going to be people who are inconsiderate and/or ignore (even abuse) social conventions. I would hope that your experiences as outlined above and the picture they paint are merely confirmation bias and that this isn't a growing trend.

With older people, they might have the excuse that they are becoming deaf, and therefore a higher volume is required for communication. But that only applies in some situations, of course.

It does vary by culture. Americans are generally perceived as being "louder" than Europeans, and southern Europeans as louder than northern Europeans. This goes for speaking volume, how much speaking they do, and also stuff like use of the car horn (hearing a horn is fairly rare in the UK; in some European cities it's near-constant). As with all cultural perceptions, there may be some truth in it, or not. (Despite the UK being a "quiet country", apparently restaurants in London are the loudest in Europe by decibel level). I have heard that in certain cultures, talking loudly is encouraged, on the apparent basis that speaking quietly suggests you have something to hide, and therefore carries conotations of duplicity and dishonesty. So in some situations there might also be that going on. But I don't want to go too far into that, apart from anything else because I don't know much about it.

Of course, if asking politely doesn't work, there's always an alternative...