Pessimism bias

Biological Parallel

The smoke detector principle: when errors have asymmetric costs, evolution biases toward the cheaper mistake. Thomson's gazelles exhibit extreme vigilance when maternal fawns are hidden, engaging in deceptive sham feeding behaviors and fleeing from ambiguous rustles—fleeing costs energy, but missing a real predator costs the fawn's life. Research confirms false alarms constitute a surprisingly large proportion of all alarms across birds and group-living mammals. Deer show similar patterns, with does exhibiting heightened startle responses when fawns are bedded down. Error management theory formalizes this: selection designs systems biased toward false positives when false negatives prove catastrophic. Smoke detectors annoying you weekly beats missing one real fire. Prey animals interpreting neutral stimuli as threats waste calories through unnecessary flight responses, but this pessimistic bias ensures survival. Better to over-prepare for threats that don't materialize than under-prepare for ones that do.