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5 SAFETY BEHAVIOR AFTER EXTINCTION TRIGGERS A RETURN OF THREAT EXPECTANCY 125 A second reason to hypothesize that safety behavior may cause a return of fear is that besides signaling safety, it can signal potential threat, even in objectively safe situations. Using a design similar to Lovibond et al. (2009), Engelhard, van Uijen, van Seters, and Velu (2015) found that when safety behavior is used in response to a safety cue (i.e., a CS that has never been paired with shock; CS-), this paradoxically increases threat expectancy to that stimulus when it is subsequently presented without safety behavior. In line with this finding, Deacon and Maack (2008) found that cleaning-related safety behavior increases threat perceptions and contamination anxiety in healthy participants. Likewise, health-related safety behavior increases health anxiety and hypochondriacal beliefs (Olatunji, Etzel, Tomarken, Ciesielski, & Deacon, 2011), and increasing obsessive-compulsive-related checking behavior increases obsession-related threat beliefs (van Uijen & Toffolo, 2015) in healthy participants. A third reason to hypothesize that safety behavior may cause a return of fear is that Vervliet and Indekeu (2015) recently found that safety behavior is resistant to fear extinction. Comparable to the Lovibond et al. (2009) and Engelhard et al. (2015) studies, participants learned that pressing a button (i.e., safety behavior) during CS+ presentation effectively cancelled a subsequent shock. Next, fear extinction was established: threat expectancy and skin conductance responses decreased after repeated unreinforced CS presentations during which safety behavior was unavailable to the participants. However, when safety behavior became available again after fear extinction, participants showed a significant return of safety behavior. Apparently, extinction of classically conditioned fear did not mitigate safety behavior. What is more, threat expectancy to the extinguished CS+ increased when safety behavior was subsequently made unavailable again (Vervliet & Indekeu, 2015). In summary, previous research has shown (1) that safety behavior can signal safety and prevent fear extinction (Lovibond et al., 2009), (2) that safety behavior can signal threat (Engelhard et al., 2015), and (3) that extinction of classically conditioned