I think you're right. From the whitepaper:

The economic effect of this is similar to a lottery where people over-estimate their
probability of getting votes and thus do more work than the expected value of their reward
and thereby maximize the total amount of work performed in service of the community.
The fact that everyone “wins something” plays on the same psychology that casinos use to
keep people gambling. In other words, small rewards help reinforce the idea that it is
possible to earn bigger rewards.

I'm sadly not sure if the "lottery effect" is really something they'd like to see removed... It seemed strange to me after a first read that this is what they were going for. Not sure that having a system that "plays on the same psychology that casinos use to keep people gambling" is really something we should strive for. Aiming to have fairer economy in which its users don't feel "tricked" would seem more reasonable to me.