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Thought Conditioning: Inducing and Reducing Thoughts About the Aversive Outcome in a Fear-Conditioning Procedure

The human fear-conditioning paradigm is a widely used procedure to study anxiety. However, merely thinking about the aversive outcome is typically not measured in this procedure. This is surprising because thinking of an aversive event is of clinical relevance (e.g., in the form of intrusions) and theoretical interest. We present two preregistered studies that (a) included thinking of an aversive outcome as an additional dependent variable and (b) compared several interventions to reduce it. We found that mere thinking of an aversive outcome could be successfully conditioned. Among the participants who showed successful acquisition, extinction training was less successful in reducing it than counterconditioning. Presenting new additional outcomes also proved effective to reduce thoughts about the initial outcome when the new outcomes were positive stimuli. Including thinking of the aversive outcome as an additional dependent variable may serve to enhance the understanding of anxiety-related disorders and inform their treatment.