. 2016 Nov 9;3(11):160510. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160510

Table 2.

Expected pay-offs of choosing the rich/poor partner for the next interaction, according to whether wealth is stable or not. Note that we make the assumption that fairness is entirely consistent, such that fair players remain fair and stingy remain stingy. The last column shows the expected partner preference of an economically rational player who is maximizing expected pay-offs.

scenario	wealth	expected pay-offs (choose rich)	expected pay-offs (choose poor)	rational preference
1. rich-fair versus poor-fair	stable	$1.15	$0.35	rich
1. rich-fair versus poor-fair	change	$0.75	$0.75	no preference
2. rich-stingy versus poor-stingy	stable	$0.46	$0.14	rich
2. rich-stingy versus poor-stingy	change	$0.30	$0.30	no preference
3. rich-fair versus poor-stingy	stable	$1.15	$0.14	rich
3. rich-fair versus poor-stingy	change	$0.75	$0.30	rich
4. rich-stingy versus poor-fair	stable	$0.46	$0.35	rich
4. rich-stingy versus poor-fair	change	$0.30	$0.75	poor