Fig 1.
An example of a gain-90% cue (Gewinn [German word for gain] 90%) followed by a search array depicting a gain target (happy face [Experiment 1, top] or red T [Experiment 2, bottom]). Participants were told that the cues described the likelihood of seeing a gain or loss target in the search array. They were also told that they would gain (lose) 25 Swiss cents in addition to a starting amount of 5 Swiss francs when seeing a gain (loss) target. Participants were asked to respond as quickly and accurately as possible according to the target (i.e., gain or loss target). Due to the copyright regulations of the NimStim face stimuli [39], faces that were not used in Experiment 1 were displayed for illustration (top) and two faces are shown twice although the same face was never repeated in any trial of Experiment 1.
Fig 2.
Pupil diameter change during the expectancy phase as a function of time and expectancy cue.
Gain cue, loss cue, and ambiguous cue refer to the gain 90%, loss 90%, and gain loss [loss gain] 50% cues, respectively. The error bars depict standard errors.
Fig 3.
The error bars depict standard errors. The line labeled “all other conditions” indicates that all pairwise comparisons of the conditions encompassed by the line revealed highly significant differences (if not otherwise indicated).
Fig 4.
The error bars depict standard errors. The line labeled “all other conditions” indicates that all pairwise comparisons of the conditions encompassed by the line revealed highly significant differences (if not otherwise indicated).
Fig 5.
Percentage of gazing at the target half a second after the first hit.
The error bars depict standard errors.
Fig 6.
Correlation between participants’ mean COS score [2] and their optimism robustness scores revealed by the two experiments.
Data of participants in Experiments 1 and 2 have been merged for this analysis in order to have a large enough sample size to investigate inter-individual differences. A score of zero represents no bias, a positive score represents a positivity bias, and a negative score represents a negativity bias in both measures.