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1 INTRODUCTION 23 Chapter 6 includes a study that investigated whether anxious individuals infer safety from approach behavior. Participants with low and high spider fear rated the danger they perceived in general and spider-relevant scenarios in which information about objective safety versus objective danger, and approach behavior versus no approach behavior, was varied. In chapter 7 , we investigated whether approach behavior adds to the beneficial effects of exposure. Spider fearful participants were repeatedly exposed to a spider by pulling the spider toward themselves, or by having the experimenter pull the spider towards them. The effects of these exposure interventions on self-reported, behavioral, and implicit spider fear were compared with a no-exposure control intervention. Finally, chapter 8 includes a summary and integration of the findings from the studies described in chapter 2 to 7, and a discussion of the potential clinical implications and directions for future research. REFERENCES Abramowitz, J. S., Deacon, B. J., & Whiteside, S. P. (2011). Exposure therapy for anxiety: Principles and practice. New York: Guilford Press. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5 th ed.) . Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. American Psychiatric Association (2014). Beknopt overzicht van de criteria (DSM-5). Nederlandse vertaling van de Desk Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria from DSM-5 ® . Amsterdam: Boom. Arntz, A., Rauner, M., & van den Hout, M. (1995). “If I feel anxious, there must be danger”: Ex-consequentia reasoning in inferring danger in anxiety disorders. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33 , 917-925. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967( 95)00032-S Baker, A., Mystkowski, J., Culver, N., Yi, R., Mortazavi, A., & Craske, M. G. (2010). Does habituation matter? Emotional processing theory and exposure therapy for acrophobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 48 , 1139-1143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.07.009