Before Voting, Do We Need to Learn How to Ask Questions?

When Words Begin to Trap Us

BrainLatam Special Series — SBNeC 2026

A common question in Brazilian electoral polls is:

“Who would you never vote for under any circumstances?”

It is useful for measuring rejection.

But there is another question we rarely ask:

Who do you believe could improve your life and the place where you live?

Both questions are about elections.

But perhaps they place the Body-Territory in different states.

One begins with what we want to prevent.

The other requires us to represent what could still improve.

BrainLatam calls this second possibility Fruition.

A question also selects what we perceive

Ask someone:

“What are you afraid of in this city?”

Certain memories will appear.

Ask:

“What do you enjoy doing in this city?”

and others will likely emerge.

The city has not changed.

The Body-Territory remains in the same place.

But the question opened a different window.

This matters for science.

And it may matter for democracy.

Science begins by asking questions

When a child learns:

“the hippocampus participates in memory,”

they have received scientific information.

But learning science requires something more:

How do we know?

Who was studied?

What was the sample?

What was measured?

Who funded it?

Is there another explanation?

What would make this hypothesis wrong?

That last question is especially important.

Science should not teach only:

“this is true.”

It should also teach:

“these are the conditions under which we currently consider this to be true.”

That is a profound shift.

We move from:

who said it?

to:

how do we know?

Perhaps this ability is as important for a democracy as it is for a laboratory.

Politics: Opinion and Judgment

In the BrainLatam analogy:

Politics → Opinion → Judgment.

A candidate says:

“I will reduce violence.”

Before liking or rejecting the proposal, we can ask:

How?

What proposal?

What mechanism connects that proposal to the result?

Has it worked somewhere else?

How much does it cost?

Who benefits?

Who may be harmed?

What would make us abandon that policy?

Science does not tell us whom to vote for.

It helps transform a promise into something that can be examined.

After that, we still need to judge politically which future we want.

Brazil also has identities built around rejection

This discussion is especially important in Latin America.

In 2022, Agustina Haime and Francisco Cantú studied negative partisanship in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador.

Their results showed that strongly rejecting a party constitutes a political orientation of its own, distinct both from supporting another party and from simply distrusting the democratic system.

In Brazil, research has also shown the importance of negative identities such as anti-PT sentiment and anti-Bolsonarism in understanding affective polarization.

A person may not say with great conviction:

“I strongly belong to this group.”

But may say with enormous intensity:

“I would never vote for that group.”

That means rejection is a real political variable.

We should not stop measuring it.

But perhaps there is a risk when we learn more and more about who the population wants to stop and very little about what it wants to build.

The form of information changes the experience

Here we find especially relevant Latin American evidence.

In 2024, researchers carried out experiments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

Participants received factually equivalent information presented in different ways.

One formulation confirmed a true statement.

Another refuted a false version.

The factual content was equivalent.

But the emotional responses were not.

Affirmative formulations produced greater engagement and were more associated with positive emotions.

Refutational formulations were more associated with negative emotions such as anger, fear, stress, and disgust.

This does not prove that:

“asking who you would never vote for causes polarization.”

That causal relationship has not been demonstrated.

But it does show something important:

The way information is presented can modify the emotional state from which it is processed.

And this allows us to formulate a new scientific question.

Rejection × Fruition

In the BrainLatam Fruition Model — Atlantic Forest, we think about the organism not only through the threats it avoids, but also through the possibilities it perceives.

What can I do?

What can I continue doing?

What can improve?

Avoiding threats is necessary.

“No” protects us.

But a life organized only around:

do not do this;

do not allow that;

do not let them;

do not vote for them;

do not let the other side win

may make what must be avoided extremely present while leaving little room to represent what we want to move toward.

In politics, then, we can measure two dimensions.

REJECTION

Who would you never vote for?

And also:

FRUITION

Who do you believe could improve your life and the place where you live?

Then comes the most important question:

How?

From belief to evidence

If someone answers:

“Candidate X.”

we ask:

What do you believe would improve?

Health?

Income?

Security?

Education?

Housing?

Time?

Water?

Environmental quality?

Then:

Which proposal from that candidate would produce this improvement?

Then:

How would that proposal reach your reality?

And finally:

Is there evidence that it could work?

In just a few steps we move from:

candidate

to:

Body-Territory → proposal → mechanism → evidence → judgment.

Decolonial Neuroscience also begins with the question

There is another issue.

A person living in Manaus may need different improvements from someone living in São Paulo.

An Andean community may organize its priorities differently from an industrial region.

An Indigenous territory may not place economic growth above water, forest, or community continuity.

So simply asking:

“Which candidate is best for Brazil?”

may hide enormous differences.

The question:

“Who could improve your life and the place where you live?”

begins with the Body-Territory.

Then we can move upward:

Body-Territory
→ Jiwasa
→ municipality
→ State
→ Federation
→ Biome.

We can test this hypothesis

BrainLatam does not need merely to defend the idea.

We can try to disprove it.

Imagine an experiment.

One group answers:

“Who would you never vote for?”

Another:

“Who do you believe could improve your life and the place where you live?”

A third receives a neutral electoral question.

Then we measure:

emotions;

response time;

memory for proposals;

hostility toward the opposing group;

confidence in the decision;

willingness to listen to another candidate;

ability to explain why a particular proposal might work.

In smaller groups, we could add:

breathing;

HRV;

electrodermal activity;

EEG;

fNIRS.

The scientific question would be:

Does the framing change only the electoral answer, or does it also modify the state of the Body-Territory during judgment?

Maybe it does.

Maybe it does not.

Maybe it depends on previous political identity.

That is exactly why it is worth testing.

Before correcting, perhaps we need to teach people how to ask

Brazil’s 2022 elections showed the large-scale circulation of misinformation through WhatsApp and other platforms.

A later experiment conducted in Brazil found that preventive strategies — prebunking — improved immediate measures of electoral trust and people’s ability to distinguish true from false information.

This suggests that it may not be enough to correct a lie after it arrives.

We need to build judgment beforehand:

How do I know?

Who is saying this?

What is the evidence?

What part am I not seeing?

What would make me change my mind?

Science, Politics, and Transcendence

In the BrainLatam architecture:

Science → Doing → Executive

Transforms proposals into hypotheses and observes results.

Politics → Opinion → Judgment

Compares possibilities and decides collectively.

Religion → Transcending → Legislative

Allows us to imagine a future that does not yet exist.

A healthy democracy needs to circulate among all three:

imagine → judge → act → observe → correct → imagine again.

The problem begins when we only reject.

Because preventing a bad future does not automatically tell us which future we want to build.

The vote may begin before the ballot box

Perhaps it begins when a child asks:

“How do you know?”

And hears:

“Because I said so.”

Or:

“Let’s find out.”

These are two different ways of learning how to relate to truth.

A democracy does not need to produce people who choose the same answer.

It needs to produce Body-Territories capable of maintaining some space between:

hearing → believing → judging → doing.

Perhaps it is in that space that Science and Politics can truly meet.

BrainLatam Question

What if, before asking only who each Brazilian wants to prevent from governing, we also began asking who they believe could improve their life and the place where they live — and how that improvement could actually happen?

Recent Latin American References — post-2021

Haime A, Cantú F. (2022). Negative Partisanship in Latin America. Latin American Politics and Society. Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador.

Areal J. (2022). ‘Them’ without ‘us’: negative identities and affective polarization in Brazil. Political Research Exchange.

Javorski E, Gusmão C, Bargas J. (2023). Dinâmicas de letramento midiático e combate à desinformação no período eleitoral. Experience with high-school students in Pará, Brazil.

Aruguete N et al. (2024). Framing fact-checks as a “confirmation” increases engagement with corrections of misinformation: a four-country study. Scientific Reports. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia.

Hale SA et al. (2024). Analyzing Misinformation Claims During the 2022 Brazilian General Election on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai. International Journal of Public Opinion Research.

Carey JM et al. (2025). Prebunking and credible source corrections increase election credibility: Evidence from the US and Brazil. Science Advances.

Petherick A et al. (2026). Dynamics of sociopolitical polarization and effects of misperception-correcting information around the 2022 Brazilian elections. Nature Communications.