Attentional bias

Biological Parallel

Wounded prey animals over-attend to predator cues—hearing danger in every rustling leaf, seeing threats in shadows. Attentional bias toward threat is adaptive post-trauma: false alarms are cheap, missed predators are fatal. But chronic hypervigilance has costs: energy expenditure, foregone foraging, stress physiology. The trade-off: survivorship bias shapes attention allocation. What killed your ancestors dominates your attentional landscape, whether or not it's the most probable current threat.