Title: Effects of mindfulness and distraction on pain depend on individual differences in pain catastrophizing: An experimental study. Running head: Effects of mindfulness versus distraction on pain

Conflicts of interest: No conflicts of interest exist with regard to the presented work What's already known about this topic? • Distraction reduces pain but pain catastrophizing interferes with this effect • Mindfulness-based interventions are beneficial for the treatment of chronic pain but it is unclear if mindfulness can be induced to deal with acute pain • Mindfulness is believed to counteract catastrophic thinking about pain What does this study add? • A direct comparison of distraction and mindfulness inductions during experimental pain • Overall pain perception is not different under conditions of distraction and mindfulness • Mindfulness works better than distraction when pain catastrophizing is high, whereas the opposite is true when pain catastrophizing is low 2 Abstract Background