Certainty effect

Biological Parallel

Squirrels cache acorns obsessively—small, certain calories—rather than gambling on finding rare large carcasses. Clark's nutcrackers store 30,000+ pine seeds annually, banking on guaranteed small returns. Certainty minimizes survival variance: a reliable food cache beats a possible jackpot when winter starvation looms. Your preference for guaranteed $100 over 50% chance of $250 mirrors ancestral selection for low-variance survival strategies.