[AnonymousOne]

I'm going to make a bunch of assumptions and just throw this out there. If it sounds about right, great, but take it with a grain of salt...


In a job interview it's your job to sell yourself, to impress your interviewer into wanting to hire you. You're going all out and actually TRYING to make the interaction good because you know that if you fail to impress, you don't get the job. When you interview, the question isn't "Will I make a fool of myself?", the question is "Will I be impressive enough to get the job?".

In a regular interaction you really have nothing to lose by being reserved, and doing so guarantees that you won't be thought a fool. So you go with the safe option. It's also possible that you don't want to dominate the conversation, or you think that people don't really care about what you have to say, so you play it safe by keeping quiet.

In this case, the difference is effort. On some level you're afraid to try in a normal interaction because you're afraid what people will think of you. In an interview, you try because you know that you have to to have any shot at the job. It's also possible that you simply do better when people ask you a bunch of questions, and start the flow of the conversation for you. In that case I'd say just start asking questions of your own in normal interactions.


In any case, even without making a bunch of assumptions about you, I would bet that the problem ultimately boils down to confidence.