Peter J. de Jong

Exposure therapy is the treatment of choice for specific phobias but prolonged exposure to feared stimuli is strenuous and may lead to treatment dropout. Previous research showed that repeated exposure to masked spiders was effective in reducing psychophysiological and behavioural fear responses, but appeared ineffective in changing subjective feelings towards spiders. This study investigated in an unselected female sample if masked counterconditioning would be more effective in reducing spider dislike compared to masked exposure, and if masked counterconditioning would also be more effective than non-masked counterconditioning. Women with varying levels of spider aversion ( N = 272) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Three spider pictures were always (counterconditioning) or never (exposure) followed by smiling faces. For half of the participants in each condition the spiders were masked. Results indicated that participants rated the spider more positively after both masked counterconditioning and masked exposure. However, the increase in valence after masked counterconditioning was not significantly larger than after mere masked exposure, or after non-masked counterconditioning. Thus, our findings show that repeated exposure to masked spider pictures is effective in reducing spider aversion, but they provided no support for the anticipated added benefit of pairing the spider with positive stimuli.

Individuals with an eating disorder (ED) often report to be disgusted by their body. Body‐related self‐disgust could play an important role in the development and maintenance of EDs. We investigated if women with relatively high ED symptom scores indeed respond with disgust upon exposure to their body as indexed by facial electromyography (fEMG) of the m. levator labii superioris and self‐report. Given that one's self‐disgust may increase/decrease depending on the relative distance of the own body to the thin ideal, we also assessed women's disgust for overweight‐ and thin‐morphs of their body. Female undergraduate students ( N = 104) were photographed and presented with their (morphed) body pictures, next to disgust‐relevant and overweight body control pictures. Higher levels of ED symptoms were associated with stronger self‐reported disgust to unedited body‐pictures and overweight‐morphs. Disgust to thin‐morphs was unrelated to ED symptoms. Participants generally showed heightened facial disgust towards overweight morphs, yet the strength of facial disgust was unrelated to ED symptoms. Thus, the findings provide evidence for the involvement of heightened body‐related self‐disgust in ED symptomatology, albeit only on the basis of self‐report.