In general with variable length discrete representations there are multiple ways of representing a given behaviour. If the evaluation function is static and concerned only with the quality of a partial solution and not with its representation then all these representations have equal worth. If the search strategy were unbiased, each of these would be equally likely to be found. In general there are many more long ways to represent a specific behaviour than short representations of the same behaviour. Thus we would expect a predominance of long representations.
Practical search techniques are biased. There are two common forms of bias when using variable length representations. Firstly search techniques often commence with simple (i.e. short) representations, i.e. they have an in built bias in favour of short representations. Secondly they have a bias in favour of continuing the search from previously discovered high fitness representations and retaining them as points for future search. That is there is a bias in favour of representations that do at least as well as their initiating point(s).
On problems of interest, finding improved solutions is relatively easy initially but becomes increasingly more difficult.
In these circumstances, especially with a discrete fitness function, there is little chance of finding a representation that does better than the representation(s) from which it was created (cf. ``death of crossover'' [15, page 222,]). So the selection bias favours representations which have the same fitness as those from which they were created.
In general the easiest way to create one representation from another and retain the same fitness is for the new representation to represent identical behaviour. Thus, in the absence of improved solutions, the search may become a random search for new representations of the best solution found so far. As we said above, there are many more long representations than short ones for the same solution, so such a random search (other things being equal) will find more long representations than short ones. In GP this has become known as bloat.