UV scaling seems to have an inversely proportional effect

I was trying to UV unwrap this object but the color grid image was being too stretched so I decided to scale the mapping down. However, scaling it down stretched the projection even more, which is really weird. Counter intuitively, scaling the uv up would make the texture appear smaller on the object.

See the gif for more detail (not embedding as it is too big).

Why is this happening? How can I get it to behave normally?

Thanks!

Increase the size of the UVs will make more of the texture show on your object, making the texture appear smaller on your object. Thsi is logical and is what your image shows.

What is the problem you are seeing