Why We Keep Choosing Bad Leaders: The Neuroanthropology of Decision-Making
Richard Jonathan O. Taduran, Ph.D. | 18 September 2025
“Ang problema ho sa Pilipino, hindi ho tayo marunong mamili ng leader natin,” Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong said recently, lamenting how voters keep reelecting corrupt officials. Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David quickly offered a counterpoint: “Di marunong bumoto? Can we blame it on the poor who are the majority of our voters?”
This tension — between blaming voters and understanding their context — is at the heart of our democracy’s crisis. It is tempting to see bad voting as ignorance or apathy, but neuroscience and anthropology tell a more complicated story. People are not just making choices in a vacuum; they are making them with brains and bodies shaped by scarcity, stress, and survival. Neuroanthropology — the study of how brains and culture shape one another — helps us see that our “bad choices” are not simply moral failings but the predictable outcomes of the conditions we live in.
Anthropologists call this niche construction — the way humans shape their environments, and in turn, those environments shape human behavior. Over decades, the Philippines has built a political niche where dynasties, patronage, and vote-buying are not anomalies but adaptive strategies. When formal institutions are weak and poverty is widespread, a system evolves that rewards short-term, transactional decisions. People do not just live in poverty — they live in a niche that continually reinforces poverty’s logic, from the way barangay politics work to the way national campaigns are funded. Understanding this feedback loop is key to breaking it.
Poverty and the Brain
Poverty is more than an empty wallet — it is a constant mental hum that pulls focus to immediate threats. Mani et al. (2013) showed that simply thinking about money problems can drop cognitive performance by the equivalent of an all-nighter. This “bandwidth tax” leaves fewer mental resources for long-term planning, making a free sack of rice or ₱500 from a candidate feel like the rational choice over a promise of good governance years away.
Sheehy and Rea’s 2017 report confirms that poverty is linked to poorer attention control, weaker inhibition, and reduced executive function — the very skills we need to delay gratification and think strategically. These are not just deficits but adaptive responses: in a world where tomorrow’s food is uncertain, focusing on the “now” is often the safest bet.
Compounding this is the neurological toll of substance use. Shabu, often a coping mechanism for stress, literally rewires the brain — damaging dopamine pathways and weakening the circuits that govern risk assessment and impulse control (Jayanthi et al., 2021; Pengpid et al., 2025). Even after abstinence, decision-making remains impaired (Wang et al., 2013). Poverty doesn’t just pressure people into short-term thinking; it can biologically hard-wire it, making escape from the cycle even harder.
Brains Built Under Stress
Brains are built over time. Synapses are pruned and strengthened in response to nutrition, caregiving, and stimulation in the first years of life. Chronic malnutrition, unsafe environments, and toxic stress leave measurable marks on brain structure and function. Dean et al. (2018) emphasize that children exposed to early adversity often show lasting differences in self-regulation, working memory, and cognitive flexibility — all skills crucial for navigating complex social and political choices as adults.
Despite progress, the Philippines still has one of the highest stunting rates in Southeast Asia: nearly one in four children under five (23.6%) are stunted, with rates exceeding 30% in some regions such as BARMM (FNRI, 2023). The World Bank reports that some provinces still reach above 40% prevalence, underscoring the scale of the crisis (Mbuya et al., 2021). Stunting is not just a health statistic — research links it to lower school readiness, poorer academic performance, and decreased lifetime earnings (Daniels and Adair, 2004; McGovern et al., 2017).
When we underinvest in maternal nutrition, prenatal care, and early childhood programs, we are effectively pre-loading society with future voters who will have to fight harder to overcome cognitive disadvantage. That is not destiny — but it is a public-policy choice with decades-long consequences.
Learning Poverty
Several compilations place the Philippines’ average IQ between 81 and 83 points — below the typical “average” range of 85–115. If these numbers are roughly accurate, they are not an insult but a warning sign that nutrition, early childhood health, and education quality are constraining the nation’s cognitive potential.
Skills-based data tell a similar story. In PISA 2022, only 16% of Filipino students achieved minimum math proficiency, with reading and science showing equally low results. The World Bank (2024) estimates that about 91% of 10-year-olds suffer from “learning poverty” — unable to read and understand a simple text. These figures point to structural deficits, not biological destiny.
IQ and skills scores are best seen as vital signs — they tell us that cognitive capacity is under stress. Countries like Vietnam have shown that rapid improvement is possible when health, nutrition, and teacher support align. The challenge is not to deny these numbers but to act on them, so that future citizens have the tools to engage critically with the choices democracy demands.
A country that ignores its cognitive indicators is like a doctor ignoring a patient’s vital signs — delay long enough, and the damage becomes harder to reverse.
Breaking the Cycle
All these forces — poverty, poor health, drug exposure, and weak education — converge in the electoral arena. Clientelism works precisely because it fits the decision-making horizon of the voter: immediate goods today for loyalty tomorrow. When scarcity is pervasive, this is rational behavior. But at the population level, it traps whole provinces in cycles of underdevelopment. Research shows that dynastic concentration is highest in the poorest regions and correlates with worse human development outcomes. The very politicians who rely on short-term handouts to secure votes are also the ones presiding over conditions that keep their constituents in survival mode (Mendoza et al., 2016).
Better choices require better conditions — starting with putting humans, not just roads, at the center of our national priorities. We should demand that the 2026 budget fund nutrition programs, early childhood care, and literacy catch-up initiatives at a scale that matches the crisis. Infrastructure ribbon-cuttings may win photo ops, but it is investments in cognitive capital that will decide whether the next generation can finally break free from the cycle of bad decisions.
Magalong is right that we must demand better choices from voters, and David is right that we cannot simply blame the poor — citizens must be empowered to choose well, and society must dismantle the traps that make short-term voting rational. In other words, we must rebuild the niche: create a country where good choices are rewarded, survival trade-offs are no longer the default, and no politician can profit from keeping an entire nation in survival mode.