Many behavioral and psychological effects of socioeconomic status (SES), beyond those presented by Pepper & Nettle cannot be adequately explained by life-history theory. We review such effects and reflect on the corresponding ecological affordances and constraints of low- versus high-SES environments, suggesting that several ecology-specific adaptations, apart from life-history strategies, are responsible for the behavioral and psychological effects of SES.

We commend Menninghaus et al. for tackling the role of negative emotions in art reception. However, their model suffers from shortcomings that reduce its applicability to empirical studies of the arts: poor use of evidence, lack of integration with other models, and limited derivation of testable hypotheses. We argue that theories about art experiences should be based on empirical evidence.

With respect to the Distancing-Embracing model, we discuss whether experts with well-developed and highly accessible schemata that lend themselves to distancing have initial affective reactions similar to those of novices, who lack access to well-developed distancing mechanisms, and whether differences between experts' and novices' responses are apparent only after distancing mechanisms have had a chance to do their work. We revisit findings from Leder et al. (2014) and discuss the role of mixed emotions and fluency.

Theatrical magic is designed to elicit negative emotions such as feelings of vulnerability, loss of control, apprehension, fear, confusion, and bafflement. This commentary suggests that the Distancing-Embracing model can help us understand how the experience of magic can be aesthetically pleasurable, not despite, rather thanks to, some of the strong negative emotions it provokes.

The Roman poet Horace said poetry gives pleasure and instructs. A more informative theory is that poetry and art, in general, are less about pleasure than about exploration of emotions. Literary authors concentrate on negative emotions, seemingly to try and understand them. In two studies, reading literary art enabled the transformation of selfhood, not by being instructed but by people changing in their own ways.

The Distancing-Embracing model proposes that negative emotions embedded in literary works can be rewarding. This is consistent with a holistic ontology in the German Romantic tradition. However, the application of cognitive psychology to explain experiences of aesthetic pleasure is problematic because it is founded on a mechanistic Enlightenment epistemology. The appreciation of negative emotions requires cognitive elaboration and closure, whereas hedonistic reward is contingent on the reader's needs, in the moment, for pleasure or distraction.

In this commentary, we address three questions: (1) How might outcomes be affected by the variation in the level of deprivation, rather than the average level of deprivation? (2) Could there be differences in the subjective perception of the same risk as either intrinsic or extrinsic, depending on people's socioeconomic status (SES)? (3) What other psychological mechanisms might play a role in influencing the psychology and behavior of people from deprived backgrounds?

Pepper & Nettle make a compelling case for how evolutionary thinking can help explain behaviours that cluster with deprivation. The role of extrinsic mortality risk in driving behaviour is probably important, but strong evidence is still lacking. By thinking carefully about behaviours seemingly at odds with an evolutionary life history perspective, we can gain important insights that will help refine theory.

Uncertainty (i.e., variable payoffs with unknown probabilities) brings together a number of features of the authors' argument. It leads to present bias, even for completely rational agents with time-consistent preferences. As an evolutionary product of Pleistocene climate instability, humans possess broad adaptations to environmental uncertainty, giving rise to key features of the behavioral constellation of deprivation (BCD).

The commendably ambitious project by Menninghaus et al. fails because its main connective tissue – “negative emotions” – is beyond the grasp of the authors' largely literary approach. The critique focuses on their treatment of the Paradox of Fiction, the neglect of the biological, adaptive nature of emotions, and the absence of convincing empirical support for key aspects of the proposed model.

Although it is a welcome and timely idea, the behavioural constellation of deprivation (BCD) needs to explain how the development of personal control, trust, and perception of future risk is mediated through relationships with parents. Further, prioritising the present over the future may not be the essence of this constellation; perhaps not quite being, either in the present or in the future, is a better depiction.

We are grateful to have received so many insightful commentaries from interested colleagues regarding our proposed behavioural constellation of deprivation (BCD) and our thoughts on its causes and consequences. In this response article, we offer some clarifications regarding our perspective and tackle some common misperceptions, including, for example, assumptions that the BCD is adaptive and that it should include all behaviours that vary with socioeconomic status. We then welcome some excellent proposals for extensions and modifications of our ideas, such as the conceptualisation of the BCD as a risk-management strategy and the calls for a greater focus on strengths and differential investment rather than deficits and disinvestment. Finally, we highlight some insightful explorations of the implications of our ideas for ethics, policy, and practice.

Menninghaus et al. distinguish art from fiction, but no current arguments or data suggest that the concept of art can be meaningfully circumscribed. This is a problem for aesthetic psychology. I sketch a solution by rejecting the distinction: Unlike most animal communication, in which signals are either true or false, art and fiction consist of signals without determinate truth values.

“Low-agency” public health interventions do not rely on individuals using their personal resources to benefit. These help people enact the choices they wish to make and are likely to increase objective and perceived control. Lower-agency interventions have been criticised as constraining individual choice. Pepper & Nettle show that this is unlikely to be the case.

Art objects differ from other objects because they are intentionally created to embody a producer's (i.e., artist's) expression. Hence, art objects are social objects whose appeal and value are determined largely by the strategic interaction between the artist and the audience. I discuss several aspects of how strategic interaction can affect an art object's perceived value and aesthetic appeal.

I argue that the Embracing factor cannot be adequately conceptualized without taking into account the regulatory power of the social sharing of emotions. Humans tend to share their negative emotions with close others, and they benefit from it. I outline how this mechanism works in art reception by regulating and transforming negative emotions into positive experiences.

Individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) display increased attentiveness to others and greater prosocial behavior compared to individuals of higher SES. We situate these effects within Pepper & Nettle's contextually appropriate response framework of SES. We argue that increased prosocial behavior is a contextually adaptive response for lower-SES individuals that serves to increase control over their more threatening social environments.

We propose an extension of the Distancing-Embracing model to the use of stories for prosocial ends. Specifically, audiences may find stories of individuals in need too emotionally overwhelming. Audiences may attempt to regulate or reduce negative emotions, which can reduce empathy and willingness to help. Through distancing, fictionalized accounts may counteract this tendency and thus increase prosocial behavior.

We connect the Distancing-Embracing model to theoretical and empirical evidence regarding empathy, which raises questions about the ordering and modulation of distancing in particular. Namely, distancing may not be a binary, continuously on/off process. Rather we suggest that changes in distancing as actualized via the relation between the individual and art (e.g., through empathy) might be a useful avenue for further consideration.

Pepper & Nettle compellingly synthesize evidence indicating that temporal discounting is a functional, adaptive response to deprivation. In this commentary, we underscore the importance of the psychology of relative state, which is an index of relative competitive (dis)advantage. We then highlight two proximate emotional social comparison reactions linked with relative state – personal relative deprivation and envy – that may play an important role in the deprivation-discounting link.