The strange thing about the apology is not that it exists but that it works, most of the time, for most people. The lesson is modest. Build for the person who exists, not the one in the model. The textbook treats status as a preference to be revealed. In practice it is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Nobody sets out to be governed by the apology, yet it shapes an astonishing share of the ordinary day.
What the evidence shows
Put a number on status and it becomes a target; put a target on it and the number stops meaning what it meant. Notice how rarely anyone is argued out of the apology, and how often they are simply moved past it by a change in circumstance. We describe the departure from the model as an error. We might equally describe the model as a hopeful guess about us. If you want to see status at work, watch a queue form where there is no reason for one.
