"The small tank does what it's supposed to do and that is reduce the number of times the pump has to start and keep it from chattering on and off when a small amount of water is being drawn. If the tank holds a quart, you can draw most of that quart before the pump comes on again. "
Very clear description of what the tank does.
In a situation where a small amount of water is being drawn, say one quart per minute from the one quart tank, the pump would turn on every minute. The larger the pump capacity, the shorter that run will be.
Say we have a small 2.5 gallon per minute pump. It would replace that quart of water with a run time of a little over 10 seconds. A 5 GPM pump would only need to run a little over 5 seconds to replace that quart. Each pump would have to turn on four times to supply a gallon of water but the run time of the larger pump would be shorter.
Then the question becomes what happens if we double the size of the tank to two quarts? Now both pumps have to run longer to replace the two quarts but they only need to turn on twice to pump a gallon of water.
I think that the switch will last longer with the larger tank as it is the on / off cycles that wear it out, not the total run time.
Without a tank or with a waterlogged tank, both of these pumps would chatter on and off, as Ron described, fast enough to damage the switch in a short time.
Accumulator tanks are important when using a pressure switch controlled pump. Bigger tanks are better than small ones. In the end you choose the tank you have room for.