The brief presentation of an emotional distractor can temporarily impair perception of a subsequent , rapidly presented target, an effect known as emotion-induced blindness (EIB). How rapidly does this impairment unfold? To probe this question, we examined EIB for targets that immediately succeeded (" lag-1 ") emotional distractors in a rapid stream of items relative to EIB for targets at later serial positions. Experiments 1 and 2 suggested that emotional distractors interfere with items presented very soon after them, with impaired target perception emerging as early as lag-1. Experiment 3 included an exploratory examination of individual differences, which suggested that EIB onsets more rapidly among participants scoring high in measures linked to negative affect.