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CHAPTER 3 80 reported that they had noticed that the contaminant was not as dirty or dangerous as they had originally thought. The fourth process involved threat (unconditioned stimulus or US) reevaluation: participants reported that they had cognitively reevaluated their threat belief, for example, by relating it to other instances when they had to touch something disgusting (e.g., while cleaning a toilet), which had not resulted in catastrophe either. The fifth process was only reported by participants in the E+SB condition, and is related to the use of SB: participants reported that they considered it less likely that they would get ill, because they had learned that they could easily clean their hands. DISCUSSION We aimed to extend the findings by Rachman et al. (2011) and van den Hout et al. (2011) by directly examining the effect of using cleaning SB during exposure to a contaminant on threat beliefs. In line with our hypothesis, we replicated the finding that the E+RP and E+SB condition resulted in a larger pre- to post-test decrease of CFDD than a no-exposure control condition, whereas this decrease did not differ between the E+RP and E+SB condition. We want to emphasize that none of the participants used SB at the post-test. Remarkably, and contrary to our hypothesis, we found a similar effect for threat beliefs: the E+RP and E+SB condition showed a larger pre- to post-test decrease in threat belief ratings than the control condition, and this decrease did not differ between the E+RP and E+SB condition. It appears that using wipes after exposure did not prevent a reduction in the degree to which participants believed their threat belief. CFDD ratings before and after wiping (E+SB) or the 30s delay (E+RP) at each exposure trial showed a distinct saw tooth pattern in the E+SB curve, which was less pronounced in the E+RP condition. It is notable that the within-trial return of CFDD in the E+SB condition did not prevent an over-trial decrease.