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1 INTRODUCTION 21 and safety behaviors (Gangemi et al., 2012; van den Hout et al., 2014, 2017). This suggests that anxious individuals may also infer safety from approach behavior. If approach triggers the processing of safety information, then it may be relevant to the understanding of the beneficial effects of exposure therapy. Exposure is regularly established by the patient actively approaching a feared stimulus. Hence, in addition to facilitating disconfirmatory experiences about the CS – US association, approach itself may add to the beneficial effects of exposure. AIMS AND OUTLINE The current dissertation aimed to investigate the role of safety behavior in the persistence of irrational fears. The first aim of the current dissertation was to test the hypothesis that the negative effects of safety behaviors on exposure outcomes depend on whether safety behavior precludes the occurrence of threat (chapter 2 and 3). Secondly, we aimed to increase our understanding of the causal influence of safety behavior on anxious psychopathology by assessing the effect of checking behavior on the severity of fears in OCD (chapter 4), and by examining the effect of safety behavior on the return of fear after fear extinction (chapter 5). Third and finally, we aimed to explore the potentially beneficial effects of approach-enhancing safety behavior by investigating whether anxious individuals infer safety from approach behavior (chapter 6), and whether approach adds to the beneficial effects of exposure (chapter 7). Chapter 2 describes two fear conditioning experiments that tested whether the detrimental effects of safety behavior on exposure outcomes depend on whether safety behavior precludes the occurrence of threat. In a computer task, participants learned that two neutral stimuli (CS+) were followed by an aversive loud noise (US), and one stimulus (CS-) was not. Participants also learned to use safety behavior that prevented the loud noise (i.e., precluded the occurrence of threat), and safety