Fig. 4: Reward rate change and Experiment 3.

a Extracting reward rate estimates (ρ) from the Asymmetric model for each participant in each experimental block in Experiment 1 (PoorRich group, N = 21; RichPoor group, N = 19) revealed significant environment by condition interaction (F(1, 38) = 14.67, p = 0.000465). This arose out of a significant difference in ρ between environments for participants in the PoorRich condition (t(20) = 8.64, p = 3.4864E−8, two-tailed paired sample t-test) which was absent among participants assigned to the RichPoor condition (t(18) = 1.16, p = 0.26, two-tailed paired sample t-test). b In Experiment 3, both groups of participants (PoorRich group, N = 23; RichPoor group, N = 15) significantly changed their acceptance rates between environments (RichPoor: t(14) = 3.07, p = 0.008; PoorRich: t(22) = 4.47, p = 0.000193, two-tailed one-sample t-test vs 0) and there was no longer any difference in the change in acceptance rates between RichPoor and PoorRich participants (t(36) = 0.77, p = 0.45, two-tailed independent sample t-test). *p < 0.05, paired sample t-test; n.s. non-significant (p > 0.05, two sided); **p < 0.01, one sample t-test (vs 0, two tailed); ***p < 0.001, one sample t-test (vs 0, two tailed). Dots represent individual data points and bars represent the group mean. Error bars represent mean ± standard error of the mean. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.