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7 ACTIVE APPROACH DOES NOT ADD TO THE EFFECTS OF IN VIVO EXPOSURE 179 more control than participants who did not. There were no differences between conditions in pleasantness of the procedure. The pre- to posttest increase in steps performed on the BAT did not differ between the Exposure + approach and the Control group. All groups showed an increase in steps performed on the BAT from pre-test to posttest, which means that all participants pulled the cart with the spider closer toward them at the posttest than at the pre-test. However, this was only associated with a pre- to posttest decrease in self-reported fear at the closest step in the BAT in both Exposure groups, but not in the Control group. Apparently, participants did not adhere to the BAT instructions, namely to pull the cart with the spider to a “non- or hardly frightening” distance, where they would tolerate it for 90 sec without feeling much distress. Even though self-reported spider fear decreased in both Exposure groups, but not in the Control group, there was only a trend for this difference to be larger in the Exposure only group than in the Control group. This may mean that mere exposure and no exposure had similar effects on self-reported spider fear. However, because the effect of exposure is substantial (Gunter & Whittal, 2010; Shafran et al., 2009), it seems more likely that this was due to a lack of power because of the Bonferroni correction that was applied to pairwise comparisons. Various lines of research indicate a reciprocal influence between motor behavior and cognition and affect (see, for example, Neumann et al., 2003), but this study did not indicate that motor approach behavior, i.e., activation of the flexor muscle of the arm by pulling a fearful stimulus toward you, is relevant to the explanation of the beneficial effects of ERP. Why did the approach manipulation not add to the effects of exposure? First, there may be a theoretical explanation. Veling and colleagues (2008) suggested that approach behavior does not reduce anxiety for threat stimuli, because threat stimuli may cause both fight (approach) and flight (avoidance) behavior. However, earlier research has shown that spider fearful individuals react to spider pictures more quickly by pushing a joystick away than by pulling it toward them, compared to non-anxious controls and control pictures