Implicit bias (unconscious bias)

Biological Parallel

Guppies raised without predator exposure still instinctively flee from shapes resembling pike profiles—an inherited template that triggers evasion without conscious processing. This hardwired recognition operates below awareness, demonstrating that natural selection can encode biases directly into neural architecture. Implicit bias is evolutionary preloading: ancestors who waited for conscious deliberation before fleeing ancestral threats left no descendants, so we inherited automatic threat responses that activate before awareness.