Knowledge vs behavior

Do people behave based on what they know? This question popped up during one session of my class in Ecological Anthropology among undergraduate Anthropology major students at the University of the Philippines Mindanao campus, located in Davao City.

Part of our lesson last Friday was on how human beings have the “plasticity” or capacity to adapt to various forms of the environment. But we don’t only have unlimited capacities for adaptation to different environments. We are gifted with intellect, the capacity to discern and make choices, whether these choices are bad or good for our lives and those of others.

This is where the question came: If people know about the harms that some human interventions in the exploitation of the environment cause, why do some of us continue polluting different vital parts of the environment?

At the level of individuals, one’s behavior is a complex of various factors and contexts that psychologists call stimuli. But many of these stimuli operate in different ways among individuals, and these are expressed in ways that may not be considered appropriate, or even socially acceptable. The worst could be that the kind of behavior one manifests could be considered downright reprehensible, both universally and specifically, in various cultural contexts.

Because no one among us is an exact replica of another, individual behavior varies, in both time and space. Even identical twins do not behave in the same way.

As the learning facilitator in my class, I discussed some examples of how people make decisions that clearly showed that many times, what one knows may not be the sole basis of one’s behavior and decisions to express a certain behavioral pattern.

For example, during our pre-school and kindergarten days, we always heard from our teachers that we should be honest, as shown in the motto, “honesty is the best policy.”

I also remember my grade 1 teacher who always reminded us in class that we need to behave “properly”—the definition of proper for her then referred to not harming each other, not causing harm to anyone, not to steal the belongings of our classmates, and not to ridicule anybody in class for how they look or dress.

But somewhere along the way as we grew up, we encountered adults who displayed behavior that our then puerile minds thought to be improper, or downright objectionable.

Growing up, I learned that candidates offered money to voters to make them choose them in an election. Not understanding the political dynamics at that time, I asked my mother why candidates of political parties came to the house and gave them money. I asked her if it was the proper thing to do. She said it was not, but it was how politicians secured votes. She explained that while it was prohibited and voters knew it was improper, they liked receiving “easy money,” so the practice was tolerated.

Presently, vote buying has become more sophisticated. It is now disguised as “ayuda” or assistance to poor families, or money offered to some people to put names on ballots (or shade them, in the present context), the day before elections start.

Many politicians are lawyers. Vice President Sara Duterte is one. So is her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte. Yet despite their knowledge of the law, of universal standards preserving basic human rights, and of rules of transparency and accountability, they have been accused of violating these. The father is now detained at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, allegedly for committing “crimes against humanity.” The daughter is now the subject of an impeachment proceeding at the Senate for allegedly having committed plunder and other offenses against transparency and accountability regulations.

In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the transition Parliament, prior to the first regular parliament elections held last Sept. 14, 2026, had a substantial number of members who were lawyers.

Yet, they were among those who passed a law that drew a serious objection from no less than the Supreme Court because it violated national electoral laws and, more importantly, the basic law of our country—the 1987 Philippine Constitution.

On the eve of the Sept. 14 elections, several incidents of armed violence took place in some polling places in Cotabato City. In Maluso, Basilan province, one whole ballot box contained pre-shaded ballots that were brought to the precincts in that town on election day.

We know that honesty and the sanctity of human lives are both basic teachings in any religion, but most especially in Islam, which literally means “submitting to the will of God (Allah, SWT).” Yet those who claim to be Muslims were suspected of these two acts—of dishonesty and of violating the sanctity of human lives.

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