ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Behavior Therapy

and Experimental Psychiatry 38 (2007) 105–120
www.elsevier.com/locate/jbtep

Approach and avoidance in fear of spiders

Mike Rinck, Eni S. Becker
Dresden University of Technology, Germany

Abstract

We examined attitudes towards spiders by employing an Approach-Avoidance Task, in which

participants respond to pictures by pulling a joystick towards themselves or by pushing it away from
themselves. For spider fearfuls, this stimulus–response assignment is either compatible (push spiders
away) or incompatible (pull spiders closer). Specific compatibility effects were found: compared to
non-anxious controls and control pictures, highly spider fearful participants responded to spider
pictures more quickly by pushing than by pulling, even when picture contents was task-irrelevant.
Moreover, compatibility effects predicted fear-related behavior independently of questionnaires.
Potential applications, extensions, and limitations of the findings are discussed.
r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Approach; Avoidance; Fear of spiders

1. Introduction

Is it possible to assess someone’s attitudes without asking him or her explicitly? Are we
able to measure people’s fear of animals or social situations without questionnaires or
interviews? During the past few years, a whole new class of tasks have been developed in
order to examine these questions. These indirect measures of attitudes promise to assess
attitudes and associations in a variety of domains, in the hope that they are less affected by
problems associated with direct measures (questionnaires and interviews), such as social
desirability. The new measures have been termed ‘‘indirect’’ because participants are not
explicitly asked to reveal their attitudes. Instead, the attitudes are inferred from seemingly

Corresponding author. Behavioural Science Institute and Clinical Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen,
P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
E-mail address: m.rinck@psych.ru.nl (M. Rinck).

0005-7916/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2006.10.001
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106 M. Rinck, E.S. Becker / J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 38 (2007) 105–120

unrelated responses. In most of these tasks, reaction times (RTs) are measured as the
dependent variable. The common principle of the tasks is that the participants’ response
speed (and/or accuracy) in a categorization task is affected by the compatibility between
the response and the valence of the stimuli (see De Houwer, 2003a). If the two are
incompatible, responses are slowed down, for instance, if one has to respond positively to a
threatening stimulus. This principle has been applied to various clinical populations using
a number of indirect tasks (e.g., Ellwart, Becker, & Rinck, 2005; Ellwart, Rinck, & Becker,
2006; Huijding & de Jong, 2006; Teachman, Gregg, & Woody, 2001). These studies and
many others indicate that indirect measures may be a helpful tool in the study of anxiety
disorders, because they promise to assess the structure and state of specific threat-related
associations.
A limitation of these tasks is that they mainly tap into the semantic aspects of emotional
information processing. Emotional reactions, however, consist of a much more complex
pattern of responses, involving behavioral and physiological responses in addition to
cognitive ones (e.g., Lang, 1994). In fear and phobias, this is particularly relevant: Fear
activates cognitive representations such as ‘‘I am afraid of spiders’’ or ‘‘spiders are
dangerous’’, but also physiological reactions of the sympathetic nervous system (e.g.,
increased heart beat) and a behavioral tendency to avoid the threatening stimulus (e.g.,
running away from a spider). Thus, the studies mentioned in the previous paragraph
indicate that spider fearful individuals do indeed associate spiders more strongly with
negative valence than non-anxious individuals do. However, they tell us little about the
processes involved in behavioral responses, that is, whether and how spider fearfuls differ
from non-anxious individuals in approach-avoidance reactions. To assess negative
attitudes by means of these affective behavioral reactions, the Approach-Avoidance
Task (AAT) was designed. In this task, single stimuli are presented to the participants
on a computer screen, for instance pictures of animals. In one version of the task
(employed in Experiments 1 and 2), there are two types of stimuli, namely negatively
valenced ones and approximately neutral ones (e.g., spider pictures and pictures showing
an empty background). The participants’ task is to respond to each stimulus by means of a
joystick connected to the computer. They are instructed to pull the joystick towards
themselves whenever one stimulus type is presented, and to push the joystick away from
themselves whenever the other type is presented. While the joystick is moved, the size of
the picture changes: pulling the joystick makes it larger, while pushing makes it smaller.
This creates the visual impression that the picture is pulled closer or pushed away,
respectively.
Depending on the combination of response direction and stimulus valence, the
stimulus–response assignment is either compatible (pull spider-free and push spiders) or
incompatible (push spider-free and pull spiders). If response times in the compatible
condition are shorter than in the incompatible condition, a compatibility effect is said to
occur, suggesting the existence of a negative attitude towards spiders, reflected in a
behavioral avoidance tendency. Moreover, the size of the compatibility effect should be
related to the strength of the negative attitudes, such that spider fearful individuals should
show larger compatibility effects than non-fearful individuals. According to the taxonomy
suggested by De Houwer (2003a), this compatibility effect may be characterized as a
traditional stimulus–response compatibility effect. Moreover, according to the definition
mentioned above, the task is an indirect one because it aims to assess attitudes without
asking participants to explicitly state their attitude. We use the general term ‘‘negative’’
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here because it is unclear which negative emotion drives the compatibility effect (e.g., fear,
disgust). We will get back to this topic in the Section 5.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to apply an AAT to anxiety
disorders. However, the predictions outlined above follow directly from previous studies of
non-clinical populations. The reasoning is based on a rapidly growing body of evidence
showing that humans usually show a spontaneous avoidance reaction to unpleasant,
threatening stimuli, and a spontaneous approach reaction to pleasant stimuli. One way to
observe these approach-avoidance reactions in overt behavior is by means of arm
movements: avoidance is associated with pushing unpleasant objects away from oneself,
and therefore with moving the arms away from one’s body. In contrast, approach to
pleasant objects is associated with pulling the objects closer, and therefore with moving the
arm towards the body. Indeed, starting with Solarz (1960), it has been found several times
that participants respond to aversive stimuli more quickly with a ‘‘push’’ movement of the
arm, whereas they respond to pleasant ones more quickly with a ‘‘pull’’ movement (e.g.,
Chen & Bargh, 1999; Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005). In fact, the close relation between
emotional valence of stimuli and arm movements seems to be quite strong, and it is also bi-
directional: arm flexion and arm extension also affect evaluative reactions to stimuli (for a
review of the latter, see Neumann, Förster, & Strack, 2003).
Our hypotheses are also compatible with results reported by De Houwer and his
colleagues (De Houwer, Crombez, Baeyens, & Hermans, 2001; Mogg, Bradley, Field & De
Houwer, 2003), who used a more symbolic AAT. In this task, participants pressed keys to
make a manikin on the screen move toward or away from stimuli. De Houwer et al. (2001)
found that an unselected group of participants needed more time to make the manikin on
the screen approach negative words and run away from positive words than to do the
opposite. Mogg et al. (2003) used a similar procedure to compare smokers to non-smokers.
They found that smokers, when compared to non-smokers, were faster when instructed to
make the manikin approach smoking-related pictures and move away from smoking-
unrelated pictures. These results were found with an AAT that did not involve arm flexions
and extensions. Nevertheless, the results are relevant to our questions of interest: They
show that AATs may be suitable for comparisons of clinical groups to control groups.
Thus, it seems safe to assume that strong, bi-directional links exist between the threat value
of stimuli and the spontaneous, avoidant motor responses they evoke in fearfuls and
phobics. In the experiments reported here, we took advantage of these pre-existing links:
we investigated whether the observed compatibility effects differ between fearful
individuals and non-anxious ones, and whether they predict their behavior in response
to real threat stimuli. In doing so, our theoretical goal was to gain more insight into the
representations and mechanisms involved in anxiety disorders, particularly in the attitudes
of phobic patients. In addition, our practical goal was to predict variance in fear-related
behavior that questionnaires do not predict.

2. Experiment 1: Approach-avoidance behavior in spider fearfuls

In Experiment 1, pictures of spiders as well as ‘‘empty’’ pictures showing only

background, but no animals, were presented, and participants pulled or pushed depending
on whether a spider was visible or not. To determine whether the effects observed here are
disorder-specific, we tested a group of highly spider fearful individuals (half of whom were
spider phobic), and compared their responses to those of a non-anxious control group.
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Moreover, we validated the observed compatibility effects by relating them to a direct

measure of spider fear (the German version of the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ);
Rinck et al., 2002) and to fear-related behavior, namely, approach speed in a behavioral
assessment test (BAT), in which participants were asked to approach a large living spider.
Most importantly, we wanted to find out whether the compatibility effects would predict
fear-related behavior independently of the questionnaire, such that the correlation of
compatibility effects and BAT scores would remain significant, even after partialing out
the correlation of FSQ and BAT scores.

2.1. Method

2.1.1. Participants
Twenty-five spider fearfuls (SFs) and 22 non-anxious controls (NACs) without any
animal oriented fears participated in the experiment. Participants were recruited after
screenings in classes at several departments of Dresden University of Technology, using
the German SAS (Rinck et al., 2002). Participants with SAS scores lower than 5 or higher
than 15 (i.e., with very low or high fear of spiders) were invited for further interviews and
testing. Before the experiment, these potential participants completed the German version
of the FSQ (Rinck et al., 2002). Moreover, participants were questioned by trained
interviewers (clinical psychologists under supervision of the second author), using the
F-DIPS (Margraf, Schneider, Soeder, Neumer, & Becker, 1996). Only candidates reaching
a minimum F-DIPS ‘‘fear’’ score of 4 and a minimum ‘‘avoidance’’ score of 3 regarding
spiders qualified for the SF group. Moreover, they had to have a minimum score of 24 in
the FSQ, whereas the NACs had maximum FSQ score of 8 (means: NACs 2.4; SFs 58.8).
Thirteen of the 25 SFs fulfilled the criteria for a specific phobia of spiders. The other SFs
fulfilled all criteria of this diagnosis except criterion E, that is, they missed only the
criterion of significant impairment in everyday life. This is very common in specific phobias
if the feared stimulus may be avoided (as spiders may be most of the time). Moreover, the
amount of impairment is not critical to the hypotheses tested here because these refer to
fear rather than impairment. The SF group and the NAC group were matched with regard
to gender (SFs 92% female, NACs 86% female), age (both groups averaged 21 years),
educational level (all were students of Dresden University of Technology), lack of
depressive symptoms (SFs scored 8.3 and NACs 7.1 on the FDD; Kühner, 1997), and trait
anxiety (SFs scored 41.6 and NACs 39.0 on the STAI-T; Laux, Glanzmann, Schaffner, &
Spielberger, 1981). All of the final 47 participants were without history of any psychiatric
disorders and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. All of them were informed of
their rights as experimental participants and gave their consent. In return for their
participation, they received course credit or a payment of 5 h per hour.

2.1.2. Materials, procedure and apparatus

Eight pictures of spiders were selected for the experiment. In addition, 8 ‘‘spider-free’’
pictures were created from the spider pictures by cutting out the spider and replacing the
empty space with the background of the picture (e.g., a green leaf or sandy ground). This
way, for each of the 8 spider pictures, a visually similar spider-free picture was created. All
pictures were presented on a computer screen with a resolution of 1024  768 pixels.
Participants were informed that single pictures with versus without spiders would be
presented to them on the computer screen in random order. Their task was to respond to
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every picture by moving a joystick attached to the computer, either by pushing it away
from themselves or by pulling it towards themselves with their dominant hand. The
joystick was positioned on the table, between the participant and the computer screen, and
the participants were seated in front of the joystick at a distance that ensured that their
joystick motions were indeed directed towards their body or away from it.
Each trial was initiated by the participant: as soon as the joystick was positioned in the
central ‘‘rest position’’ and the participant pressed the ‘‘start’’ button located near the top of
the joystick, a picture appeared. The participant then had to decide whether the picture
contained a spider or not and then pull or push the joystick accordingly. The difference
between the two types of pictures was easily visible. The picture disappeared as soon as the
joystick was moved by approx. 301, either towards the participant or away from him or her.
This was close to the maximum possible movement that the joystick allowed (approx. 321).
The picture disappeared irrespective of whether the joystick was moved in the correct or
wrong direction. Joystick motions to the left or right did not cause the pictures to disappear.
The time from appearance of the picture to its disappearance was automatically recorded
by the computer. The next picture appeared after moving the joystick back into the central
position and pressing the start button.
To allow for the intended zooming effect, seven different sizes of each picture were
created. The size presented on the screen depended on the joystick position: upon initiation
of a trial by the participant, the medium size was presented on the screen (300  400
pixels). When the joystick was pulled by approx. 71, the picture was replaced by the same
picture in size 360  480. When it was pulled further to approx. 151, the picture appeared in
size 420  560. Upon further pulling of the joystick to approx. 221, the picture appeared in
size 510  680. Finally, the picture disappeared when the joystick was moved to about 301.
Correspondingly, pushing the joystick away from the middle position by approx. 7, 15,
and 221 caused the picture to appear in sizes 225  300, 165  220, and 99  132,
respectively, such that each back-and-forth movement of the joystick created a series of
changes in the size of the picture. This zooming effect created the visual impression that
pulling the joystick made the pictures come closer, and that pushing the joystick made
them disappear.
In the first block of the experiment, half of the participants had to respond to spiders by
pushing the joystick away from themselves and to spider-free pictures by pulling it towards
themselves. For the other participants, the assignment was reversed. After 16 practice
trials, 80 trials with spider pictures and 80 trials with spider-free pictures were presented in
pseudo-random order, with the restriction that no more than 3 pictures of the same type
were presented successively. After the first block, participants were allowed to take a short
break, after which the assignment of response directions to picture types was reversed. The
second block of the experiment started with 32 practice trials, followed by 80 trials with
spider pictures and 80 trials with spider-free pictures in a new pseudo-random order. In
total, each experimental picture was presented 10 times in each block, yielding a total of
320 experimental trials, that is, 80 trials in each of the four possible combinations of
picture type and response direction.
Participants were tested in individual sessions. Before the experiment, they were
interviewed to assess their diagnosis, and the questionnaires were given. Afterwards, they
received instructions for the AAT. The AAT lasted for about 20 min, and it was followed
by a BAT. The BAT involved the following procedure: In front of a closed, separate room,
the participant was asked to open the door and approach a living spider located in a closed
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terrarium as quickly and closely as possible (minimum distance was 10 cm, the spider was
not touched). The experimenter started timing the approach duration as soon as she had
finished reading the instructions to the participant. The spider was a 7 cm long harmless
tarantula (Aphonopelma pallidum), located about 5 m away from the door. When the
participant had reached the spider, or when he or she decided to stop the approach,
the remaining distance between the participant and the spider as well as the duration of the
approach attempt were registered. Because participants could avoid the spider either by
approaching slowly (affecting time) or by refraining from approaching (affecting distance),
approach speed was calculated, taking both time and distance into account. After the
BAT, participants were debriefed and paid. In total, the experiment lasted for about
45 min.

2.1.3. Design
Full combination of the two within-subjects factors ‘‘picture type’’ (spider, spider-free)
and ‘‘response direction’’ (pull, push) with the two between-subjects factors ‘‘group’’ (SFs,
NACs) and block sequence (push spiders first, pull spiders first) yielded a 2  2  2  2
factorial design. Manual RTs of correct responses as well as error rates were used as
dependent variables. From the RTs, median RTs were determined for each participant for
each of the four combinations of picture type and response direction. In addition,
compatibility effect scores were computed from the participants’ median RTs by
subtracting each participant’s median RTs in the pull conditions from his or her median
RTs in the corresponding push conditions (spider-push minus spider-pull, and no-spider-
push minus no-spider-pull). These scores reflect the relative strength of approach and
avoidance tendencies: more negative values indicate more negative reactions, that is,
stronger avoidance. We also computed Spearman–Brown split-half reliability coefficients
of the compatibility scores for spider pictures by correlating each score from the first half
of each block with the corresponding score from the second half. In the ANOVAs reported
below, interactions involving the group factor are most relevant, because they reflect
processing differences between SFs and NACs.

2.2. Results

Due to the ease of the task, error rates (i.e., incorrect complete responses) were very low.
They averaged less than 2%, and did not vary between experimental conditions. Therefore,
only RTs of correct responses are reported below. The mean RTs and compatibility effects
for correct responses are shown in the upper part of Table 1, separately for each combination
of group, picture type, and response direction. Sequence of the two experimental blocks
(pushing spiders first vs. pulling them first) did not affect the results significantly; the factor
block sequence yielded neither a main effect nor any interaction. On average, participants
responded more quickly by pushing than by pulling1 (747 vs. 789 ms; F(1,43) ¼ 27.1;
1
Please note that an overall response time difference between pulling and pushing (i.e., a significant main effect
of the factor ‘response direction’) should not be interpreted because it may be affected by a variety of factors. For
instance, design features of the joystick or the participants’ seating position may make pushing or pulling motions
generally faster. For instance, the joysticks used in the experiments were different models, which affected the
general speed of pulling and pushing motions. Therefore, it is important to interpret relative rather than absolute
differences between pushing and pulling, for instance by comparing the compatibility effects for different
materials or different participant groups to each other.
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Table 1
Mean manual reaction times in ms (with standard deviations) depending on group, picture type, and response
direction, and compatibility effect scores in Experiments 1–3

Experiment, picture type, and group Response direction Compatibility effect (push–pull)

Pull Push

Experiment 1
Spider SFs 774 (122) 695 (70) 79 (113)
Spider NACs 731 (100) 746 (145) 15 (92)
Spider-free SFs 842 (111) 790 (95) 52 (112)
Spider-free NACs 809 (164) 757 (119) 52 (88)

Experiment 2
Spider SFs 725 (136) 689 (159) 36 (85)
Spider NACs 709 (98) 739 (117) 30 (66)
Spider-free SFs 782 (151) 797 (116) 15 (84)
Spider-free NACs 772 (114) 778 (96) 6 (72)
Experiment 3
Spider SFs 767 (92) 777 (89) 10 (54)
Spider NACs 735 (90) 786 (97) 51 (53)

po0.001; Z2 ¼ 0.39). They also responded more quickly to spider pictures than to spider-free
ones2 (736 vs. 799 ms; F(1,43) ¼ 82.7; po0.001; Z2 ¼ 0.66). Most importantly, the analysis of
spider pictures revealed the predicted interaction of group and response direction
(F(1,43) ¼ 9.32; p ¼ 0.004; Z2 ¼ 0.18) because as expected, SFs responded to spider pictures
more quickly by pushing (695 vs. 774 ms, F(1,24) ¼ 12.39; p ¼ 0.002; Z2 ¼ 0.34), whereas
NACs did not show a significant difference between pulling and pushing (731 vs. 746 ms,
F(1,21)o1). For spider-free pictures, in contrast, only a main effect of response direction was
observed, such that pushing responses were generally faster than pulling responses (774 vs.
824 ms, F(1,43) ¼ 13.4; p ¼ 0.001; Z2 ¼ 0.24). To validate the observed compatibility effects,
we related them to a direct measure of spider fear, the German version of the FSQ (Rinck et
al., 2002) and to fear-related behavior, namely approach speed in a BAT. The compatibility
effect for spider pictures (on average, 79 ms for SFs and +15 ms for NACs) was correlated
with FSQ scores (r ¼ 0.41, p ¼ 0.005), and with approach speed (r ¼ 0.48, p ¼ 0.001).
Most importantly, the latter correlation remained significant (r ¼ 0.30, po0.05), even after
partialing out the correlation between FSQ and speed. Thus, the AAT predicted phobic
behavior in addition to what the questionnaire predicted. Split-half Spearman–Brown
reliability of the compatibility scores was r ¼ 0.80.

2.3. Discussion

Experiment 1 revealed the predicted compatibility effect in spider phobics and highly
spider fearful individuals: compared to NACs and spider-free pictures, they responded
2
Faster responses to spiders may reflect either a general avoidance of spider pictures (both fast pulling and fast
pushing made them disappear), or the frequent finding that the detection of target stimuli is faster than the
verification of their absence. In any case, neither this main effect of picture type nor the main effect of response
direction are of particular relevance to the questions studied here.
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more quickly by pushing spider pictures away than by pulling them closer. Maybe the most
remarkable result of Experiment 1 is the fact that the compatibility effects predicted
approach speed in the behavior assessment test, even after controlling for the correlation
between approach speed and FSQ scores. This is noteworthy for at least three reasons.
First, the correlation between FSQ and BAT speed was quite high to begin with (r ¼ 0.75,
po0.001), possibly because it was inflated by the preselection of participants according to
their FSQ scores. Second, approach speed is a controlled aspect of behavior, whereas
previous studies have found that indirect measures tend to predict automatic aspects rather
than controlled ones (e.g., Huijding & de Jong, 2006). This result may not be as
contradictory as it seems at first sight, and there are several possible explanations. Both the
AAT and the BAT are directly related to avoidance behavior, therefore, the AAT shares a
larger overlap with the BAT than questionnaires. Moreover, it may be that for strong
associations such as the ones studied here, indirect measures predict both automatic and
controlled aspects of behavior. This possibility cannot be ruled out by the present
experiment because we did not measure automatic behavior, for instance, the startle reflex
(Huijding & de Jong, 2006). Finally, the observed partial correlation between compatibility
effects and BAT speed suggests that indirect measures such as the AAT do indeed have
unique predictive value: They allow to predict more aspects of behavior than could be
predicted from direct measures alone.

3. Experiment 2: Cognitive re-interpretation of arm movements

Experiment 1 revealed differences in approach-avoidance tendencies between spider

fearfuls and non-anxious controls. These results are promising, but their theoretical
interpretation is equivocal. This is the case because the participants’ arm movements (and
the accompanying joystick movements) may be interpreted in two fundamentally different
ways. In Experiment 1, they were described to each participant with reference to his or her
own body: arm flexions were labeled as movements toward the body, and arm extensions
as movements away from the body. However, they might just as well be interpreted with
reference to the picture on the computer screen. This way, arm flexions become movements
away from the picture, and arm extensions become movements toward the picture. This
alternative interpretation is critical because it reverses the pattern of approach and
avoidance: pulling the joystick now corresponds to avoidance (similar to pulling the hand
away from an object), and pushing it corresponds to approach (similar to grasping an
object). This possibility was already mentioned by Chen and Bargh (1999) as well as
Neumann et al. (2003), but it was not tested empirically by these authors. Related research
has shown that different reference points for arm movements do indeed exist, and that the
observed reaction time pattern depends on the interpretation adopted by the participants
(e.g., Markman & Brendl, 2005).
For the purpose of measuring threat-related behavioral avoidance tendencies, the
alternative interpretation may be disastrous: depending on the interpretation that
participants assign to each movement, the observed RTs may correspond to approach
or avoidance, or a mixture of both, and the results may become completely
uninterpretable. In fact, although the results of Experiment 1 suggest that a majority of
participants adopted the suggested body-reference interpretation, it is impossible to
determine whether some participants preferred the alternative, stimulus-reference
interpretation. In fact, it may be the case that more NACs than SFs preferred the
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stimulus-reference interpretation, thereby artificially increasing the observed differences

between groups. Moreover, the interpretation may not even be stable over time, such that
participants switch between interpretations during the task. On the other hand, the results
reviewed by Neumann et al. (2003) suggest that a strong relation between arm flexion and
positive valence exists, just as a relation between arm extension and negative valence. In
addition, the zooming function of the AAT should discourage participants from adopting
a stimulus-reference interpretation of their arm movements: the fact that the pictures grow
and shrink in response to pulling and pushing, respectively, is only compatible with a
body-reference interpretation. Thus, it may be that cognitive re-interpretations of arm
movements had little or no effect in Experiment 1.
Experiment 2 was designed to empirically determine the effect of alternative
interpretations on compatibility effects. It was identical to Experiment 1, except for the
way the instructions were phrased: pulling the joystick was now described as pulling it
away from the picture on the screen, and pushing the joystick was described as pushing it
toward the picture. If this re-interpretation is irrelevant, the results of the first experiment
should be replicated. If the re-interpretation is important, the compatibility effects should
be reduced. In the most extreme case, the pattern of results in Experiment 2 should be
exactly the opposite of the pattern observed in the first experiment.

3.1. Method

This experiment was almost identical to the previous one, therefore, only the differences
will be described in detail.

3.1.1. Participants
Twenty-three SFs and 24 NACs without any animal oriented fears participated in the
experiment. Participants were recruited and selected according to the same criteria and
procedures as in Experiment 1. As before, the two groups were matched according to
gender, age, educational level, lack of depressive symptoms, and trait anxiety. They had
not participated in the previous experiment. All of them were informed of their rights as
experimental participants and gave their consent. In return for their participation, they
received course credit or a payment of 5 h per hour.

3.1.2. Materials, procedure, and design

There were only three relevant differences between this experiment and the previous one.
First, there was no BAT in this experiment. Second, the instructions were reversed:
participants were instructed to move the joystick either toward the picture on the screen
(pushing) or to move it away from the picture on the screen (pulling). Consequently,
pushing the joystick now corresponded verbally to approach, and pulling it corresponded
verbally to avoidance. Third, to determine the relative effects of the verbal instructions,
participants were questioned directly after the experiment about their subjective
interpretation of pulling and pushing.

3.2. Results

The error rates observed in this experiment did not vary between experimental
conditions, but they were slightly higher than in the previous experiment (averaging 5%).
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This is hardly surprising, given the obvious contradiction between the picture-reference
instructions and the visual impression caused by the zooming effect. The mean RTs and
compatibility effects for correct responses are shown in the middle part of Table 1,
separately for each combination of group, picture type, and response direction. The results
were similar to those of Experiment 1: on average, participants responded more quickly to
spider pictures than to spider-free ones (716 vs. 782 ms; F(1,43) ¼ 103.3; po0.001;
Z2 ¼ 0.70), but they did not differ in speed of pulling vs. pushing (747 vs. 751 ms;
F(1,43)o1). Separate analyses of spider-free pictures and spider pictures showed that no
effects were significant for spider-free pictures (all F(1,43)o1). For spider pictures, SFs
and NACs showed opposite response patterns: SFs tended to respond to spider pictures
more quickly by pushing (689 vs. 725 ms, F(1,22) ¼ 4.16, p ¼ 0.054, Z2 ¼ 0.16), whereas
NACs responded more quickly by pulling (709 vs. 739 ms, F(1,23) ¼ 4.93, p ¼ 0.04,
Z2 ¼ 0.18). Consequently, the predicted interaction of group and response direction was
significant (F(1,43) ¼ 8.7; p ¼ 0.005; Z2 ¼ 0.17). The three-way interaction of group,
response direction, and block sequence was also significant (F(1,43) ¼ 8.7; p ¼ 0.005;
Z2 ¼ 0.17) because the compatibility effect was larger for SFs who started with the
compatible stimulus–response combination.
As expected, the compatibility effects for spider pictures were significantly correlated
with the participants’ FSQ scores (r ¼ 0.45, p ¼ 0.002). Most notably, this correlation
was at least as strong as in Experiment 1, despite the change in instructions. Split-half
Spearman–Brown reliability of the compatibility scores was comparable as well; it
amounted to r ¼ 0.76.

3.2.1. Subjective interpretation of movements

Despite the fact that the instructions encouraged a picture-referenced interpretation of
pulling and pushing, only 2 SFs and 3 NACs reported that they had adopted this
interpretation throughout the task. In contrast, many participants reported that ‘‘it felt
like’’ pulling the joystick made the picture come closer (approach), whereas pushing the
joystick made it ‘‘go away’’ (avoidance). Consequently, 19 out of 23 SFs, and 10 out of 24
NACs (83% vs. 42%, w2(1) ¼ 8.33, p ¼ 0.004) reported that they had adopted a body-
referenced interpretation. Thus, the zooming effect seemed particularly potent for SFs.

3.3. Discussion

The results of Experiment 2 suggest that the AAT including the zooming function is
quite resistant against cognitive re-interpretations of arm movements: the instructions
described joystick movements with reference to the pictures on the screen. Nevertheless,
the results of Experiment 2 resembled those of Experiment 1, in which body-reference
instructions were used. Most importantly, the critical differences between SFs and NACs
were replicated in Experiment 2. Overall, the effects in Experiment 2 were slightly weaker
than in Experiment 1, but they remained reliable. Most likely, this was due to the visual
impression caused by the zooming function, which was strong enough to override the
instructions in most of the SFs, and in about half of the NACs.3
3
We also conducted two control experiments that were similar to the experiments reported here, but employed a
fixed picture size (i.e., no zooming function). The experiment with body-reference instructions yielded
compatibility effects which were similar to those of Experiment 1, whereas the effects disappeared in the
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M. Rinck, E.S. Becker / J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 38 (2007) 105–120 115

4. Experiment 3: Approach and avoidance in response to an irrelevant stimulus feature

Although the previous experiments revealed avoidance tendencies in highly spider

fearful individuals, several problems remain. Most importantly, the instructions referred to
the stimulus dimension of interest, that is, whether a stimulus shows a spider or not. This is
unfortunate because it may have directed participants’ attention to the research question
addressed, introducing the possibility to use response strategies, just as in questionnaires.
To solve this problem, Experiment 3 employed a different version of the AAT. In this
version, participants respond to a stimulus feature that is independent of the stimulus
dimension that the task is meant to assess. In particular, the task-relevant dimension was
picture format (landscape-wide vs. portrait-high) and the task-irrelevant dimension was be
picture contents (spiders): the participants were instructed to pull the joystick in response
to high pictures and push it in response to wide ones (or vise versa for one half of the
participants), irrespectively of the pictures’ contents. With this change in procedure, the
compatibility effects are caused by incompatibility of the response dimension (pulling vs.
pushing) with an irrelevant stimulus dimension (picture contents), rather than the relevant
stimulus dimension (high vs. wide format).
Turning picture contents from the task-relevant feature into an irrelevant feature
has a number of interesting consequences: First, the task is more ‘‘elegant’’ in that
participants do not react to the dimension of interest. This makes the task less prone
to response strategies the participants might want to employ. Previous studies em-
ploying other indirect tasks suggest that incompatibility effects may be expected even
when the critical dimension is task-irrelevant (e.g., De Houwer, 2003b). Therefore, we
predicted that they should occur in Experiment 3 as well. For instance, in response to a
high picture of a spider, spider phobics should find it difficult to pull the joystick, even if
they are asked to ignore picture contents. Second, there is no need for a change of
instructions in the middle of the experiment, rendering additional practice trials
superfluous. And third, each single picture may be shown several times in both formats,
thereby decreasing error variance and allowing for an evaluation of single stimuli.
Experiment 3 was designed to find out if differences in compatibility effects between spider
fearfuls and non-anxious controls would also occur if they were related to an irrelevant
stimulus feature.

4.1. Method

This experiment was similar to Experiment 1, therefore, only the differences will be
described in detail.

4.1.1. Participants
Twenty-one SFs and 24 NACs without any animal oriented fears participated in the
experiment. Participants were recruited and selected according to the same criteria and
procedures as in Experiment 1. As before, the two groups were matched according to
gender, age, educational level, lack of depressive symptoms, and trait anxiety. In contrast,

(footnote continued)
experiment with stimulus-reference instructions (unlike Experiment 2). These experiments suggest that resistance
against re-interpretation is indeed due to the visual impression created by the zooming function.
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they differed greatly regarding their SAS scores (SF mean 19.6, s.d. 3.6, NAC mean 0.6,
s.d. 0.8; t(43) ¼ 25.4, po0.001) and their FSQ scores (SF mean 69.7, s.d. 20.3, NAC mean
2.2, s.d. 2.7; t(43) ¼ 16.1, po0.001). They had not participated in any of the previous
experiments. All of them were informed of their rights as experimental participants and
gave their consent. In return for their participation, they received course credit or a
payment of 5 h per hour.

4.1.2. Materials, procedure, and design

The same eight spider pictures as in the previous experiments were used, but no empty
pictures.4 From each spider picture, a high version was created in 7 sizes (with the width
approx. 75% of the height), in addition to the existing wide version in 7 sizes (with the
height approx. 75% of the width). In the practice phase, each picture was shown three
times in each format. In the following experimental phase, each picture was shown 20 times
in high format and 20 times in wide format, yielding a total of 368 trials. In the
experimental phase, pictures were presented in random order, with the restriction that no
picture would be repeated on consecutive trials. Half of the participants in each group were
randomly assigned to the instructions ‘‘pull for high pictures, push for wide ones’’, while
the other half received the reverse instructions. It took participants about 15 min to
complete this AAT. The experimental design was a simple 2  2 design with the between-
subjects factor ‘group’ (SFs, NACs) and the within-subjects factor ‘response direction’
(pull, push). This experiment did not have two separate blocks, therefore, split-half
reliability was computed by correlating the compatibility scores from the first half of the
experiment with those of the second half.

4.2. Results

The error rates observed in this experiment were uniformly low (averaging 2%), and
they did not vary between experimental conditions. The mean RTs of correct movements
and the corresponding compatibility effects are shown in the lower part of Table 1,
separately for each combination of group and response direction. The 2  2 ANOVA of
these RTs yielded the predicted interaction of group and response direction
(F(1,43) ¼ 6.45; p ¼ 0.02; Z2 ¼ 0.12). In addition, the main effect of response direction
was also significant because on average, participants responded more quickly by pulling
than by pushing (751 vs. 782 ms; F(1,43) ¼ 14.36; po0.001; Z2 ¼ 0.23). The nature of the
significant interaction was clarified by two follow-up comparisons: only NACs responded
significantly faster by pulling than by pushing (735 vs. 786 ms, F(1,23) ¼ 21.74, po0.001
Z2 ¼ 0.49), whereas SFs showed no difference (767 vs. 777 ms, F(1,20)o1). Split-half
Spearman–Brown reliability of the compatibility scores was slightly lower than in the
previous experiments (r ¼ 0.71).

4.3. Discussion

The results of Experiment 3 revealed a compatibility effect that was about as large as the
one observed in the previous experiments, even though stimulus valence was an irrelevant
4
In an unpublished study, we presented empty pictures and several other picture types (other animals, faces)
together with the spider pictures. This did not affect the compatibility effects observed for spiders.
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M. Rinck, E.S. Becker / J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 38 (2007) 105–120 117

dimension, and participants had to respond to another, uncorrelated dimension. In

particular, spider fearfuls found it particularly difficult to respond to spider pictures by
pulling, even though they were instructed to ignore picture contents and respond to picture
format. This finding suggests that compatibility effects in spider fearfuls can be observed
even when they caused by an irrelevant stimulus feature.

5. General discussion

Taken together, the three experiments reported here provide evidence for the claim that
negative attitudes towards spiders in spider fearfuls are related to behavioral avoidance
tendencies, which can be measured by means of a simple joystick task. In all experiments,
spider fearfuls showed specific spider-related compatibility effects: compared to non-
anxious controls and control pictures, they responded to spider pictures more quickly by
pushing than by pulling. In addition, Experiment 1 provided evidence for the validity of
these results: the size of the compatibility effect predicted fear-related behavior
independently of questionnaires. Experiment 2 showed that the compatibility effect was
resistant against cognitive re-interpretation of arm movements, most likely because of the
zooming function employed in the AAT. Finally, in Experiment 3 the compatibility effect
occurred even when picture contents was task-irrelevant. The latter result seems
particularly important because it suggests that the measurement outcomes observed here
may fulfill at least one property of automatic processes, namely goal-independence: even
though spider fearfuls’ task was to react according to picture format, they were affected by
picture contents. In this respect, the avoidance tendencies measured with the AAT differ
from the more controlled avoidance behavior that phobics show in a BAT. They also differ
from questionnaire scores which are determined by conscious reflections of an individual’s
fear, and which are subject to distortions, for instance by social desirability. Consequently,
the compatibility effects observed in Experiment 1 were able to predict approach speed in
the BAT over and above what the FSQ predicted. In the following, we will outline the
potential relevance of the avoidance tendencies measured here, and we will discuss features
of the task used to measure the tendencies.
With regard to the task employed here, the results suggest that the AAT is a valid
procedure for assessing how strongly individuals show avoidance reactions in response to
certain stimuli. The AAT distinguished highly spider fearful individuals from non-anxious
individuals, it was resistant against cognitive re-interpretation, and most importantly, it
predicted fear-relevant behavior in a behavioral assessment task over and above
questionnaires. Moreover, the irrelevant-dimension version employed in the third
experiment allowed to assess responses to feared objects, even though picture contents
was irrelevant to the task instructions. In this respect, the irrelevant-dimension version of
the AAT is a specific variation of the Affective Simon Task (see De Houwer et al., 2001), in
that the task measures on a trial-to-trial basis the compatibility of the response with an
irrelevant stimulus dimension. Accordingly, one might argue that the AST, the EAST (De
Houwer, 2003b), and the irrelevant-dimension version of the AAT are even ‘‘more
indirect’’ than other tasks: participants’ attitudes are not addressed explicitly, and in
addition, they are irrelevant to the task instructions.
Compared to other indirect measures of attitudes employed in Clinical Psychology, the
AAT has some specific features. First, the AAT uses avoidance-related behavior to
measure the strength of negative attitudes, rather than more semantic aspects of attitudes.
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118 M. Rinck, E.S. Becker / J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 38 (2007) 105–120

Thus, if one is particularly interested in behavioral aspects of fear, the AAT may be the
task to choose. Second, the AAT takes advantage of intrinsic associations between
unpleasant stimuli (e.g., spiders) and certain behaviors (i.e., avoidance). In the EAST, in
contrast, valence has to be associated extrinsically with specific response keys during the
experiment. The verbal AST lies somewhere in the middle between these extremes:
although at some point early in life, the arbitrary association between emotional valence
and certain words (e.g., ‘‘bad’’ or ‘‘dangerous’’) had to be learned, it is likely to be
automatic by the time the AST is applied. It should be noted, however, that functional
differences between extrinsic and intrinsic stimulus–response effects are still a topic for
future research.
It should also be noted that the AAT also has a some limitations, when compared to
other indirect measures. Most notably, its use of behavioral tendencies as an indicator of
attitudes is also a limitation: it may be limited to measuring attitudes that are in one way or
another related to approach and avoidance. These may be frequent, particularly in
phobias, but the approach-avoidance relation may be irrelevant in other domains and
disorders, e.g., depression. Second, the AAT does not distinguish between different types
of attitudes, all of which may be related to approach and avoidance. With regard to
spiders, for instance, both fear and disgust are important, because spider phobics find
spiders both more threatening and also more disgusting than non-anxious controls do.
Therefore, we used the general term ‘‘negative attitudes’’ in this paper rather than ‘‘fear-
related attitudes ‘‘or ‘‘disgust-related attitudes’’. It will have to be shown whether one or
the other drives the compatibility effects in spider fearfuls. Our expectation is that both will
be relevant, which would contribute to the substantial size of the effects observed here. For
the separation of different attitudes, however, tasks such as the IAT or EAST may be more
appropriate (e.g., see Teachman et al., 2001).
The compatibility effects observed here suggest that negative attitudes of spider fearfuls
are indeed reflected in behavioral avoidance tendencies in response to pictures of spiders.
This finding complements earlier ones found with other indirect measures, which showed
that spider fearfuls show particularly negative attitudes towards spiders (e.g., Teachman et
al., 2001). These studies are important because they demonstrate differences between
clinical and non-clinical populations, but they say little about the causal status of the
differences or about the time course of attitudes and disorders or about their change. Only
a few studies have addressed the latter question by comparing attitudes before versus after
treatment (e.g., Teachman & Woody, 2003). These studies indicate that successful
treatment reduces negative attitudes, and it would be worthwhile to find out whether the
same is true for avoidance tendencies as measured with the AAT. Furthermore, it should
be determined whether the remaining negative attitudes and remaining avoidance
tendencies after treatment predict the probability of relapse. It seems likely that phobic
patients who seem to be successfully treated, but who still show strongly negative attitudes,
are at greater risk of relapse than patients with more positive attitudes. Moreover, given
the bi-directional nature of the relation between arm movements and emotional valence of
stimuli, it should be explored whether the AAT could be employed therapeutically by
having phobic patients repeatedly pull threatening stimuli closer rather than pushing them
away. And finally, the study of approach-avoidance tendencies should be extended to
other disorders. For instance, avoidance tendencies related to social threat could be
assessed by having socially anxious participants respond to emotional facial expressions,
much like Marsh et al. (2005) did for an unselected group of participants. Other disorders
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M. Rinck, E.S. Becker / J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 38 (2007) 105–120 119

should also be closely related to approach and avoidance reactions, for instance, substance
abuse or eating disorders.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by grant RI 600/6-1 from the German Research
Foundation (DFG) to Mike Rinck and Eni Becker. We would like to thank Andrea
Reinecke, Kathrin Heuer, Lidia Kolanko, Susann Klötzer, Gero Lange, Joyce Lutgens,
Spence van Melis, and Silvana Müller for their help in testing the participants, Frank
Leonhardt for programming numerous versions of the experimental software, and the
reviewers for their comments. We are also grateful to Jan De Houwer for many helpful
suggestions, and to Reinout Wiers for asking us to develop the AAT used in Experiment 3.
Both authors are now at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

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