Pepper & Nettle (P&N) synthesize a wide range of research linking low socioeconomic status (SES), or deprivation, with “temporal discounting”—a variety of present-oriented behaviors they group under the label of the “behavioral constellation of deprivation” (BCD). They argue that temporal discounting is “a contextually appropriate response” to deprivation. For scientific and philosophical reasons, we laud multiple aspects of the target article. Here, we offer several refinements that aim to help the “appropriate-response perspective” become more scientifically mature and of greater value to informing policy responses to poverty and inequality.
The target article attempts to use an evolutionary framework to explain the BCD as an environmentally contingent outcome. We approve of this overall approach. But the appropriate response perspective is not merely an evolutionary model; it is a context-dependent evolutionary model (see Lewis Reference Lewis2015; Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990a). Explicitly identifying it as such would allow future work in the area to make use of several important conceptual tools.
The first of these concepts is evolved information-processing design features (Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017). A context-dependent model proposes that selection favored psychological mechanisms that take, as input, specific environmental cues linked to a specific survival- or reproduction-related problem (Lewis Reference Lewis2015; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017). “Extrinsic mortality risk,” which the target article implicitly posits is the input into the context-dependent mechanism, does not meet this criterion. If evolved psychological mechanisms are responsible for the BCD, they would have evolved to be sensitive to specific cues. Homicide rates, food scarcity, rates of intergroup violence, and frequency of sexual assault might all be cues that the mechanisms take as input. The appropriate-response perspective could increase its explanatory power if it identified the specific environmental cues that the proposed mechanism processes as input.
A second key evolutionary concept that the appropriate-response perspective could fruitfully employ is by-products, or incidental effects (Kurzban et al. Reference Kurzban, Tooby and Cosmides2001; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017; Park Reference Park2007; Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990a; Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990b). As a consequence of their information-processing design, evolved psychological mechanisms can produce nonfunctional behaviors. Imagine an ancestral human in an environment containing cues to a low likelihood of future reward for delayed gratification. The context-dependent mechanism that took those cues as input could produce, as output, a greater valuation of immediate rewards. Tobacco and illicit drugs, substances whose human use is novel on an evolutionary timescale, may produce subjective rewards that exploit the mechanism's evolved design features. In this way, substance abuse issues linked to the BCD may reflect nonfunctional, by-product output of evolved context-dependent mechanisms.
The failure to distinguish between functional and nonfunctional outputs also results in clustering two fundamentally different phenomena under the rubric of “temporal discounting”: impulsive behavior, which is inherently present-oriented, and plans of action, which are inherently future-oriented but can nonetheless intentionally discount future costs and benefits relative to those in the present (see Bratman Reference Bratman1987). It is much easier to see how planned temporal discounting might be functional in the context of deprivation than it is to make this case for impulsive behavior.
From an evolutionary perspective, the extent to which a behavior can be viewed as “appropriate” depends on whether it reflects the output of an evolved information-processing mechanism's design. If this is all that “appropriate” were meant to entail in the target article, then some of the impulsive elements of the BCD could undermine the proposed model. But although P&N do not attempt to explicitly connect the evolutionary underpinnings of the appropriate-response perspective to any broader ethical concepts, that connection is strongly suggested in their framing. “We emphasise the idea that the present-oriented behaviours of the constellation are a contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors rather than a pathology or a failure of willpower,” they say (in the abstract). “By describing behaviours as ‘contextually appropriate,’ we wish to imply that they are understandable given the context in which people are operating” (sect. 2.1, para. 3).
We can ask three broadly different kinds of questions about the appropriateness of human action. First are questions about prudence or instrumental rationality. These questions take as fixed the goals that an actor has (or should have) and then ask whether the act is likely to serve those goals. Second are questions about permissibility and obligation. What prudence counsels is not always permissible; we may be obligated to do otherwise. Third are questions about responsibility. Sometimes we do things that are morally impermissible but have reasons or excuses that would make it inappropriate for others to blame us or punish us in response.
The evolutionary sense of “appropriateness” does not fit neatly into any of these three broad normative dimensions, although it is most closely aligned with the dimension of prudence or rationality (Maynard-Smith Reference Maynard-Smith1982). Noting the implications of P&N's appropriate-response perspective as a context-dependent model, however, may leave us in a better position to evaluate the BCD in terms of either permissibility or responsibility. For example, a fuller understanding of the origins of the BCD may steer us away from the view that it is morally impermissible for those living in conditions of deprivation to have children at a young age, out of wedlock, and while dependent on public assistance (Shelby Reference Shelby2016) or toward the view that we cannot justifiably blame or punish them for breaking the law as harshly as we would if they were better off (Lewis Reference Lewis2016). The ethical implications of the appropriate-response perspective could, in turn, help government agencies, legislatures, and judges evaluate the normative dimensions of their law and policy decisions – for example, in how they choose to structure social welfare benefits, and how they design and implement criminal sentencing and corrections systems.
Fleshing out the implications of the appropriate-response perspective as a context-dependent model may not only give us information about which policy interventions would most effectively serve a set list of social aims but also help us better understand which aims we ought to pursue. Unleashing its full potential will take further work in the behavioral sciences and in moral and political philosophy.
Pepper & Nettle (P&N) synthesize a wide range of research linking low socioeconomic status (SES), or deprivation, with “temporal discounting”—a variety of present-oriented behaviors they group under the label of the “behavioral constellation of deprivation” (BCD). They argue that temporal discounting is “a contextually appropriate response” to deprivation. For scientific and philosophical reasons, we laud multiple aspects of the target article. Here, we offer several refinements that aim to help the “appropriate-response perspective” become more scientifically mature and of greater value to informing policy responses to poverty and inequality.
The target article attempts to use an evolutionary framework to explain the BCD as an environmentally contingent outcome. We approve of this overall approach. But the appropriate response perspective is not merely an evolutionary model; it is a context-dependent evolutionary model (see Lewis Reference Lewis2015; Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990a). Explicitly identifying it as such would allow future work in the area to make use of several important conceptual tools.
The first of these concepts is evolved information-processing design features (Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017). A context-dependent model proposes that selection favored psychological mechanisms that take, as input, specific environmental cues linked to a specific survival- or reproduction-related problem (Lewis Reference Lewis2015; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017). “Extrinsic mortality risk,” which the target article implicitly posits is the input into the context-dependent mechanism, does not meet this criterion. If evolved psychological mechanisms are responsible for the BCD, they would have evolved to be sensitive to specific cues. Homicide rates, food scarcity, rates of intergroup violence, and frequency of sexual assault might all be cues that the mechanisms take as input. The appropriate-response perspective could increase its explanatory power if it identified the specific environmental cues that the proposed mechanism processes as input.
A second key evolutionary concept that the appropriate-response perspective could fruitfully employ is by-products, or incidental effects (Kurzban et al. Reference Kurzban, Tooby and Cosmides2001; Lewis et al. Reference Lewis, Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao and Buss2017; Park Reference Park2007; Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990a; Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990b). As a consequence of their information-processing design, evolved psychological mechanisms can produce nonfunctional behaviors. Imagine an ancestral human in an environment containing cues to a low likelihood of future reward for delayed gratification. The context-dependent mechanism that took those cues as input could produce, as output, a greater valuation of immediate rewards. Tobacco and illicit drugs, substances whose human use is novel on an evolutionary timescale, may produce subjective rewards that exploit the mechanism's evolved design features. In this way, substance abuse issues linked to the BCD may reflect nonfunctional, by-product output of evolved context-dependent mechanisms.
The failure to distinguish between functional and nonfunctional outputs also results in clustering two fundamentally different phenomena under the rubric of “temporal discounting”: impulsive behavior, which is inherently present-oriented, and plans of action, which are inherently future-oriented but can nonetheless intentionally discount future costs and benefits relative to those in the present (see Bratman Reference Bratman1987). It is much easier to see how planned temporal discounting might be functional in the context of deprivation than it is to make this case for impulsive behavior.
From an evolutionary perspective, the extent to which a behavior can be viewed as “appropriate” depends on whether it reflects the output of an evolved information-processing mechanism's design. If this is all that “appropriate” were meant to entail in the target article, then some of the impulsive elements of the BCD could undermine the proposed model. But although P&N do not attempt to explicitly connect the evolutionary underpinnings of the appropriate-response perspective to any broader ethical concepts, that connection is strongly suggested in their framing. “We emphasise the idea that the present-oriented behaviours of the constellation are a contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors rather than a pathology or a failure of willpower,” they say (in the abstract). “By describing behaviours as ‘contextually appropriate,’ we wish to imply that they are understandable given the context in which people are operating” (sect. 2.1, para. 3).
We can ask three broadly different kinds of questions about the appropriateness of human action. First are questions about prudence or instrumental rationality. These questions take as fixed the goals that an actor has (or should have) and then ask whether the act is likely to serve those goals. Second are questions about permissibility and obligation. What prudence counsels is not always permissible; we may be obligated to do otherwise. Third are questions about responsibility. Sometimes we do things that are morally impermissible but have reasons or excuses that would make it inappropriate for others to blame us or punish us in response.
The evolutionary sense of “appropriateness” does not fit neatly into any of these three broad normative dimensions, although it is most closely aligned with the dimension of prudence or rationality (Maynard-Smith Reference Maynard-Smith1982). Noting the implications of P&N's appropriate-response perspective as a context-dependent model, however, may leave us in a better position to evaluate the BCD in terms of either permissibility or responsibility. For example, a fuller understanding of the origins of the BCD may steer us away from the view that it is morally impermissible for those living in conditions of deprivation to have children at a young age, out of wedlock, and while dependent on public assistance (Shelby Reference Shelby2016) or toward the view that we cannot justifiably blame or punish them for breaking the law as harshly as we would if they were better off (Lewis Reference Lewis2016). The ethical implications of the appropriate-response perspective could, in turn, help government agencies, legislatures, and judges evaluate the normative dimensions of their law and policy decisions – for example, in how they choose to structure social welfare benefits, and how they design and implement criminal sentencing and corrections systems.
Fleshing out the implications of the appropriate-response perspective as a context-dependent model may not only give us information about which policy interventions would most effectively serve a set list of social aims but also help us better understand which aims we ought to pursue. Unleashing its full potential will take further work in the behavioral sciences and in moral and political philosophy.