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It has been proposed that the judicious use of safety behaviour can facilitate improvements in the acceptability of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). It was decided to explore the possibility of facilitating CBT by introducing a form of safety behaviour. We sought to assess the degree to which Exposure plus Safety Behaviour (E + SB) is an effective intervention for contamination fears.

A comparison was made between the effects of a control condition (Exposure and Response Prevention; ERP) and an experimental condition (Exposure plus Safety Behaviour; E + SB) in which each exposure to a contaminant was followed by the use of a hygienic wipe in a sample of (n = 80) undergraduate students. In session one, each participant touched a confirmed contaminant 20 times. After each exposure participants were asked to report their feelings of contamination, fear, disgust, and danger …