Sad that I’ve turned into one of Pavlov’s dogs and that very reasonable methods of increasing functionality have been abused so much that they are no longer useable.
Ive seen most prompts before. I know what pressing cancel or ok on each one does without thinking. And if I dont know what it does, I have to pause and figure out the consequence of each button.
And when I watch other people use computers, they will close things, and I ask them "what was that" they often respond "I dont know, I didnt ask for it, so I closed it." There seems to be a persuasive misunderstandig that dismissing a prompt will leave everything in its previous state, and that it cant make any changes.
To me there's nothing wrong with that attitude though. One of the best lessons you can teach someone when they're browsing the internet is;
If some website is asking for permission to do something or wants you to download something that you didn't ask for. Then DON'T do it.
thinks akin to "by closing this box or clicking ok, you are enabling autosave."
If the website or application is popping up constant unimportant dialogs, then the user is trained to quickly dismiss them...
Could it be that the model you describe doesn't fit the mental model of a typical human very well? Could the cause of this "pervasive misunderstanding" be bad design, rather than dumb users?
Read your prompts before closing them isnt the same as "the users have a pervasive misunderstanding." Its usually panic. Its "im not a computer person so Im not even going to try reading this."
Have you ever had the conversation:
"This came up on my pc, what do I do"
"What does it say"
"Oh"