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3 DISCONFIRMING CONTAMINATION-RELATED THREAT BELIEFS 85 method. Levy and Radomsky 2016) also obtained beneficial effects of E+SB in a clinical sample. Five participants in the E+SB condition provided an explanation for the decrease in threat belief ratings that was related to the availability of SB, which may have implications for the beneficial effects obtained with E+SB. Even though participants did not clean themselves in the final exposure trial, they may have realized that they could clean their hands immediately after the experiment was finished, and taken this into account when they rated their threat belief at the post- test. Their threat beliefs may not have decreased in situations in which SB is not available for a longer period of time (Lovibond, Mitchell, Minard, Brady, & Menzies, 2009; Engelhard et al., 2015). It is a limitation of this study that we did not ask participants when they expected the catastrophe (i.e., contamination or illness) to happen, and that we only included a single session of exposure. All participants identified a threat belief related to getting contaminated and ill. Disconfirmation of the threat belief may therefore not have been fully possible during the experiment. Moreover, participants may have hindered a long-term reduction of threat beliefs by washing their hands after the experiment. Despite these limitations and the use of a nonclinical sample, threat belief ratings decreased significantly and substantially, with large effect sizes in the E+RP and E+SB condition. We therefore think that we did manage to capture cognitive change. It is clinically relevant that the beneficial effects of E+SB are maintained over time and generalize to the clinical population, and therefore further research with a clinical sample and multiple sessions of exposure is needed to investigate the long-term effect of E+SB on threat beliefs related to contamination. Finally, it is remarkable that the within-trial return of CFDD in the E+SB condition did not prevent over-trial reductions of CFDD (see Figure 2). In line with findings of van den Hout et al. (2011, 2012), the reductions in CFDD in both the E+SB and the E+RP condition followed a quadratic curve. Furthermore, in the current study, contamination and disgust declined faster in the E+SB condition than in the