Abstract

In order to explore the effect of the decreased safety behaviors on social phobic symptoms and the mechanism underlying this effect, this study compared three types of exposure, namely exposure with decreased safety behaviors and appropriate cognitive rationale, exposure with decreased safety behaviors and extinction rationale, and exposure with no change in safety behaviors and extinction rationale. 45 social phobics were randomly allocated to one of three exposure groups and received one of three types of exposure. The results showed that exposure with decreased safety behaviors and appropriate cognitive rationale produced significantly greater reductions in anxiety and belief ratings for feared outcomes than exposure with no change in safety behaviors and extinction rationale and exposure with decreased safety behaviors and extinction rationale. These results imply that exposure could be more effective if social phobics are encouraged to drop their safety behaviors in the feared social situation and this maneuver is presented within cognitive rationale.