Unconscious bias is when your brain, without consulting you, decides how to treat people based on lazy, outdated stereotypes it picked up from TV, society, or your uncle at the dinner table in 2006.

It’s the silent assumption.
The snap judgment.

And no — it’s not your “intuition.”
It’s your brain being lazy.

How It Works

It’s the internal voice that goes:

“They seem competent.”
“They seem annoying.”
“I just don’t trust them — no idea why.

You like the person who wears the kind of trainers you like.
You think the one who uses too many exclamation marks is unserious.
You’re suspicious of people who don’t make eye contact exactly the way you expect them to.
And you assume the person with the spreadsheet and calm tone knows what they’re doing — even though they once asked if “Excel autosaves.”

You’re not logical.
You’re comfortable.

Real Life Bias

• You give more credit to the person who speaks confidently — even if they’re talking absolute nonsense.
• You dismiss an idea because the person sharing it always smells faintly of tuna and you’ve decided that says something about their reliability.
• You think someone’s late once and suddenly they’re “unreliable forever.” Meanwhile your favourite colleague could turn up in flames and you’d call it a rough morning.
• You mentally file someone as “lazy” because they don’t type fast. Not because they are lazy — because they remind you of your ex’s cousin who used to nap a lot.

This is what happens when your brain swaps thinking for vibes — and you run with it like it’s gospel.

Final Word

Everyone has unconscious bias — including people who read self-help books, drink fair-trade oat milk, and repost TED Talks.

Unconscious bias is your brain quietly being a prejudiced little gremlin in the background. You can’t kill it, but you can train it — like a rude dog that keeps peeing on the rug. It takes work. It takes honesty. And it takes admitting that, yes, even you sometimes think dumb things for no good reason.

Congratulations. You’re human.