Conditioning phase (shocks)
shock, pain
SHOCKS, SHOCK
This phase included two counterbalanced 10-trials blocks, one for each distraction type (thinking about writing letters versus thinking about drawing shapes).Before each block, participants were taught how to implement the specific distraction type and received fictive information regarding its efficacy. Specifically, the placebo-distraction (whether letters or shapes, counterbalances across participants) was described as a strategy that was found very effective in reducing fear and pain. The experimenter further provided participants with a bogus scientific description of the underlying neural mechanisms that explain why the strategy is effective. In addition, the experimenter explained that studies show that even when people feel that they are not very successful at implementing this distraction, still it is highly effective. By contrast, for the control-distraction, the experimenter told participants that it was found not effective in reducing fear and pain, and provided them with a bogus scientific description of the underlying neural mechanisms that explain why it was ineffective. All explanations were slightly modified according to which distraction type served as the placebo-distraction versus the control-distraction (see Supplementary Information Following each distraction type description, participants had 2 practice trials with sounds simulating shocks. Participants were told that they will perform a training block for each distraction type in order to implement the strategy better, and that in this block they will receive an electric shock in every trial. Unknown to participants, we used the low and high intensity level shocks for the placebo-distraction and the control-distraction blocks, respectively.Each trial in the two conditioning blocks began with a fixation cross (2100–2900 ms), followed by an 