Beliefs and expectations about treatment have been shown to significantly impact treatment outcomes in medical settings. However, researchers have seldom examined the role of beliefs within the context of cognitive behavioral therapy. Beliefs may be particularly salient for safety behavior (SB) use in exposure therapy, as clinicians often hold opinions about whether judicious SB use facilitates or inhibits treatment. These beliefs may consequently be relayed during psychoeducation, influencing client expectations of SB helpfulness and exposure efficacy. We investigated experimentally the influence of SB beliefs on working memory, speech predictions, speech duration, anxiety, performance, and speech acceptability. Speech anxious undergraduate participants (N = 144) received psychoeducation on exposure and were told (using random assignment) either that SBs: increase anxiety (unhelpful), decrease anxiety (helpful), or were provided with no information on SBs (control). People in the helpful condition only believed the exposure would be more successful. Crucially, exposure expectancy mediated the relationship between the helpful (but not unhelpful) condition and willingness to engage in future exposures. There were no effects of condition on most cognitive, emotional, or behavioral outcomes, suggesting that SBs (and SB beliefs) may have less impact on exposure outcomes than is currently believed.

关于治疗的信念和期望已显示出对医疗环境中治疗结果的显着影响。然而，研究人员很少在认知行为疗法的背景下研究信念的作用。信念对于在暴露疗法中使用安全行为（SB）尤其重要，因为临床医生经常就明智地使用SB促进还是抑制治疗持有意见。因此，这些信念可能会在心理教育过程中传达出来，从而影响客户对SB帮助和暴露效果的期望。我们通过实验研究了SB信念对工作记忆，语音预测，语音持续时间，焦虑，表现和语音可接受性的影响。言语焦虑的本科生（N= 144）在接触时接受了心理教育，并被告知（使用随机分配）SB：增加焦虑（无助），减少焦虑（有帮助）或未获得有关SB的信息（对照）。处于帮助状态的人只相信接触会更成功。至关重要的是，接触期望值介导了有益（但不是无益）条件与参与未来接触意愿之间的关系。条件对大多数认知，情感或行为结局均无影响，这表明SB（和SB信念）对暴露结局的影响可能比目前认为的要小。