Pepper & Nettle (P&N) argue that exposure to uncontrollable disability and death leads people to value immediate rewards over longer-term goals. Whereas deficit models view this response as pathological, P&N consider it “contextually appropriate” – that is, understandable, given the context of hardships related to socioeconomic status (SES) in which people are operating. Their perspective is consistent with results from mathematical modeling in biology and cognitive science. Such modeling shows that when “the future's uncertain, and the end is always near” (The Doors 1970), individuals may benefit from seizing smaller, immediate rewards at the expense of investing in larger, later rewards (Ellis et al. Reference Ellis, Del Giudice, Dishion, Figueredo, Gray, Griskevicius, Hawley, Jacobs, James, Volk and Wilson2012; Fawcett et al. Reference Fawcett, McNamara and Houston2012; McGuire & Kable Reference McGuire and Kable2013; Sims et al. Reference Sims, Neth, Jacobs and Gray2013).

Despite a focus on appropriate responses to external context, P&N fully acknowledge that harsh conditions can lead to deficits (e.g., due to neglect or poor nutrition), and so do we (Ellis et al. Reference Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius and Frankenhuis2017; Frankenhuis & de Weerth Reference Frankenhuis and de Weerth2013). However, deficit models are not the whole story. Contextually appropriate responses may also include the development of enhanced skills and abilities that are ecologically relevant in harsh, unpredictable environments. Here, we focus on such skills and abilities, which have only recently become a target of investigation, so we know little about them. Initial findings, however, are promising (for review, see Ellis et al. Reference Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius and Frankenhuis2017; Frankenhuis & de Weerth Reference Frankenhuis and de Weerth2013). We focus specifically on the skills and abilities needed to make the most of a world that is difficult to predict and control (Frankenhuis et al. Reference Frankenhuis, Panchanathan and Nettle2016; Mittal et al. Reference Mittal, Griskevicius, Simpson, Sung and Young2015). What protean skills and abilities might we expect in such a continually changing world?

The short answer is: It depends. What aspects of the environment are unpredictable and uncontrollable – the home, school, neighborhood, country, or all of these – and to what extent? Is there some social support that can be relied on? Barring such nuances for now, let us consider the poorest and most chaotic inner-city areas, in which there is generally little scope for predicting and controlling outcomes in multiple life domains, including health, work, and love.

We distinguish between “specialization” and “sensitization” effects (Ellis et al. Reference Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius and Frankenhuis2017). “Specialization” occurs when repeated developmental exposures to a stressor improve attention, perception, learning, memory, and problem solving relevant to this stressor across a variety of contexts (Frankenhuis & de Weerth Reference Frankenhuis and de Weerth2013). “Sensitization,” in contrast, occurs when skills and abilities manifest only in currently stressful contexts that match the contexts in which the stressor has normally been encountered (e.g., Dang et al. Reference Dang, Xiao, Zhang, Liu, Jiang and Mao2016; Mittal et al. Reference Mittal, Griskevicius, Simpson, Sung and Young2015).

When opportunities are sparse and fleeting, people should be extra-attentive to them (Nederhof et al. Reference Nederhof, Ormel and Oldehinkel2014). Although we are not aware of studies directly testing this assumption, two recent studies do suggest that stress-adapted people develop enhanced abilities for flexibly switching between tasks or mental sets. Consistent with specialization, Vandenbroucke et al. (Reference Vandenbroucke, Verschueren, Ceulemans, De Smedt, De Roover and Baeyens2016) find enhanced response shifting in Belgian children from low-SES backgrounds (but see Obradovic Reference Obradovic2010). Consistent with sensitization, Mittal et al. (Reference Mittal, Griskevicius, Simpson, Sung and Young2015) observe enhanced attention shifting in U.S. adults from unpredictable backgrounds when they were experimentally put into a mind-set of economic uncertainty. In this mind-set, people exposed to high childhood unpredictability also displayed enhanced aspects of working memory central to tracking novel environmental information (Young et al., Reference Young, Griskevicius, Simpson, Waters and Mittalunder review).

When encountering short-term rewards, people from harsh environments might show enhanced abilities for procuring them. Consistent with specialization, Suor et al. (Reference Suor, Sturge-Apple, Davies and Cicchetti2017) report enhanced reward-oriented problem solving (e.g., gaining access to an attractive toy encased in a transparent box) in four-year-old U.S. children with bold temperaments from low-SES backgrounds. These same children, however, displayed reduced performance in an abstract visual problem-solving task similar to the kinds of tests administered in schools. Thus, bolder children from low-SES backgrounds might develop enhanced reward-oriented problem-solving skills for gaining access to immediate rewards, which may trade off against abstract problem-solving skills.

So far, we have discussed (a) shifting between tasks and mental sets, (b) tracking novel environmental information, and (c) exhibiting persistence in procuring immediate rewards. What about learning new contingencies? Consistent with sensitization, Dang et al. (Reference Dang, Xiao, Zhang, Liu, Jiang and Mao2016) report that when they were experimentally put in a mind-set of high financial demand, lower-SES Chinese students showed enhanced procedural learning (i.e., acquiring novel stimulus–response associations) compared with their higher-SES counterparts. Other work shows that in such a mind-set, community samples from the United States and India showed reduced performance on cognitive functions that rely heavily on working memory (Mani et al. Reference Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir and Zhao2013). An interesting and open question for future research is to determine which components of working memory can become enhanced and which impaired by exposure to specific forms of adversity.

Traditional deficit models consider individuals from harsh backgrounds to be at risk for impaired development, and the intervention goal is to reduce or repair the damage. Following Ellis et al. (Reference Ellis, Del Giudice, Dishion, Figueredo, Gray, Griskevicius, Hawley, Jacobs, James, Volk and Wilson2012), P&N critique this approach by arguing that present-oriented behaviors are a “contextually appropriate response to structural and ecological factors, rather than pathology or a failure of willpower.” Ellis et al. (Reference Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius and Frankenhuis2017) take this critique one step further by arguing that deficit-based intervention approaches fail to leverage the unique strengths and abilities that develop in response to high-stress environments. Uncovering a high-resolution map of these “hidden talents” would enable the design of classroom environments, instructional strategies, and job training to work with, instead of against, the capacities of stress-adapted people (see Ellis et al. Reference Ellis, Bianchi, Griskevicius and Frankenhuis2017 for detailed illustrations), enabling a wider range of individuals to achieve their full potential.

In conclusion, we propose to extend P&N's model by arguing for a well-rounded perspective on stress-adapted cognition, which includes deficits, contextually appropriate responses, and strengths (i.e., enhanced skills and abilities). Our perspective has scientific merit for its completeness and societal value for its ability to inform a class-conscious psychological science that attends to social-structural inequalities (see Geronimus Reference Geronimus2013). It underscores the unique skills and abilities that develop in high-adversity contexts and that can be leveraged in policy and practice to better fit the needs and potentials of stress-adapted people.