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3 DISCONFIRMING CONTAMINATION-RELATED THREAT BELIEFS 83 a threatening outcome (e.g., dying). A contaminated object may not (only) activate a representation of threat, but may directly evoke disliking and motivate avoidance of the stimulus. In other words, whereas fear may be best explained by Pavlovian (classical) conditioning, disgust may be better understood in terms of evaluative conditioning, which involves a hedonic judgment about the stimulus itself (i.e., like or dislike; see Engelhard, Leer, Lange, & Olatunji, 2014). Evaluative responses (like disgust) are more resistant to extinction than fear and threat expectancies (see Engelhard et al., 2014). However, evaluative-conditioned disgust may be reduced by counterconditioning (Engelhard et al., 2014), and habituation (Mason & Richardson, 2012). Unlike extinction, which involves inhibitory learning (Myers & Davis, 2007), habituation entails a reduction in responding to the stimulus. This can be achieved by repeated physical contact with the disgust-eliciting stimulus (Bosman, Borg, & de Jong, 2016), and may explain why the CFDD ratings decreased. We should note that this is different from the assumed mechanism of change in habituation-based models of exposure therapy (Foa & Kozak, 1986). Participants in the E+SB condition did not remain in the fearful situation (i.e., contaminated state) until fear decreased, but “wiped away” their feelings of CFDD. Moreover, the within-trial returns of CFDD at each exposure trial did not prevent over-trial reductions. The reduction in CFDD ratings may have subsequently influenced threat belief ratings. Participants may have inferred danger from the emotions evoked by the judgment of the stimulus, that is, used emotional reasoning: “I feel disgusted, therefore this contaminant must be dangerous”. Indeed, Verwoerd, de Jong, Wessel, and van Hout (2013) found that students with a high fear of contamination inferred the risk of becoming ill on the basis of experienced disgust. As CFDD decreased over the exposure trials, perhaps emotional reasoning, and thus threat beliefs, declined too. This line of reasoning fits with the explanation the majority of participants gave for the decrease in threat beliefs (see Table 3). Furthermore, the results may, at least partly, be explained by measurement issues. The semantic distinction between CFDD ratings and belief ratings is crucial