The lesson is modest. Build for the person who exists, not the one in the model. The evidence here is thinner than the confident commentary suggests, and the honest position is a shrug with a direction of travel. Institutions know all this, of course, which is why small talk is so rarely left to chance. If you want to see effort at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one.
The ordinary case
The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for reformers: people are not waiting to be corrected. The point is not that people are foolish. The point is that effort is expensive, and we economise on it like everything else. If you want to see effort at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of small talk, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance.
The textbook treats effort as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. The remedy is rarely exhortation. It is a change to the situation so that the easier choice is also the better one. The strange thing about small talk is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. Nobody sets out to be governed by small talk, yet it shapes an astonishing share of the ordinary day.
