Present-Focused Behavior as a Rational Adaptation to Precarity

Inter-temporal impulsivity has been implicated in several theoretical explanations of the self-reinforcing nature of low socioeconomic status (SES). However, how exactly this interaction transpires is yet to be identified. We hypothesize that impulsivity arises from planning failures due to unpredictable resource demands, and people learn to adapt to this by being present-focused. We tested this hypothesis across three studies using a novel paradigm in which participants used a farming simulator and chose crops with different risk and time preferences. We found that participants' revealed time preferences adaptively shortened when they faced resource shocks and expanded in the absence of such shocks. We also found greater shrinkage of temporal horizons when these shocks were unpredictable rather than predictable. Our work shows that irrationality need not be invoked to explain the occurrence of present-bias in low SES individuals, and that such behavior may simply be a rational adaptation to the environmental demands of planning under precarity.