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8 DISCUSSION 197 APPROACH BEHAVIOR Yet another finding that warrants attention was reported in chapter 6 . In that chapter, we studied whether spider fearful individuals infer safety from approach behavior in objectively dangerous and safe scenarios. The findings presented in chapter 6 suggest that approach itself may signal safety in anxious individuals (van Uijen, van den Hout, & Engelhard, 2017). The tendency to use response information as information ( ex-consequentia reasoning, e.g., emotional reasoning; Arntz, Rauner, & van den Hout, 1995; and behavior as information; Gangemi et al., 2012; van den Hout et al., 2014, 2016) has been held to have a negative impact on the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders (see Engelhard & Arntz, 2005). The findings presented in chapter 6 suggest that this tendency may, in a different context, have positive results (van Uijen, van den Hout, & Engelhard, 2017). However, in chapter 7 , approach did not add to the beneficial effects of exposure (van Uijen, van den Hout, & Engelhard, 2015). Repeated exposure to a spider by pulling it toward you and by having the experimenter pull it toward you caused similar reductions in spider fear. The beneficial effects of approach on exposure outcomes may have been overshadowed by the robust effects of exposure, which suggests that the potential additional effects of approach to exposure may not be clinically significant. However, the exposure conditions were similar regarding the visual impression of the decrease in distance to the spider, and the decision to decrease the distance to the spider, which may have caused similar experiences of approach in both conditions (van Uijen et al., 2015). Future research is needed to investigate whether safety behavior that motivates approach adds to the beneficial effects of exposure.