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4 SAFETY BEHAVIOR INCREASES OBSESSION-RELATED COGNITIONS 103 to set a daily alarm on their phone as a reminder. The control group did not receive any further instructions. The second session took place approximately one week later (6-8 days). Participants in the experimental and monitor group handed in their daily Checklists. All participants again filled out the CCS, OBQ-44 RT, BAI, and Checklist. Additionally, participants in the experimental and monitor group indicated on a 0 (not at all) to 100 (exclusively) VAS to what extent they had given socially desirable answers when filling out the daily Checklists, and on a 0% - 100% VAS, which percentage of the behavior they had filled out on the daily Checklists they had actually performed. Participants were thoroughly debriefed, and participants in the experimental group were encouraged to return to their normal frequency of checking behavior. Participants were handed a letter with contact information of the researchers, and asked to contact them in case they would keep thinking about the study or have any further questions ( n = 0). Finally, participants were thanked and paid for their participation. RESULTS Randomization and manipulation checks One outlier (CCS post-test; control group) was changed into M + 3 SD s (Field, 2009), and one participant in the monitor group was excluded from analyses, because afterwards she reported recently being diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. One-way ANOVAs 1 were performed to check for pre-test differences between groups. Groups did not differ in obsessive-compulsive tendencies (OCI-R), F (2,86) = 1.39, p = .26, or checking behavior (Checklist), F (2,86) = 0.48, p = .62, at the pre-test, see 1 For F -tests we reported effect size η p ², whereby 0.02 indicates a small effect, 0.13 a medium effect, and 0.26 a large effect. For t -tests we reported effect size Cohen’s d, whereby 0.2 indicates a small effect, 0.5 a medium effect, and 0.8 a large effect.