Figure 1. Experimental procedure.

Each trial began with an initial 2 sec instruction to either “Attend” or “Reappraise” which was followed by a 5 sec presentation of a negative or a neutral picture. During attend trials, participants were instructed to attend to the picture without trying to alter any ongoing feelings and on reappraise trials they were instructed to neutralize their feelings to the picture. After each picture viewing phase, participants indicated their current level of discomfort on a scale from 1 to 7 (1 = minimal or no discomfort, 7 = maximum discomfort). Each trial ended with a fixation cross jittered between trials with a duration of 3–5 seconds.