Learn / Getting the most from an experiment

Getting the most from an experiment

5 minute read

Two people can do the same experiment and learn very different amounts from it. The difference is rarely courage. More often it comes down to attention, follow-through, and what happens afterwards.

During the experiment

Take your hands off the wall. Drop the safety behaviors you named in the plan, all the way. Half-dropping them leaves the belief an excuse. If you meant to walk down the middle of the aisle, do not drift toward the shelves.

Look outward. Fear pulls attention inward, onto your heartbeat, your voice, your face. That inward view is where the frightening picture comes from. Decide in advance what you will watch instead: the faces of the people you are talking to, what they actually do, the room. Wells and Papageorgiou showed that shifting attention outward reduces anxiety and negative beliefs in social situations.

Stay long enough. Not until the anxiety disappears, but until the prediction has been tested. If the fear was "they will leave within five minutes," you need to be there for six.

Check the facts, not the feeling. In the moment, ask the question your plan set up. Have I fainted yet? How are people actually responding? Has the thing I predicted happened?

After the experiment

Write it down soon. Memory for anxious events is selective and drifts toward the feared version. Record what happened while it is fresh, in plain factual language.

Draw the general lesson. People rarely generalize on their own. "I did not faint in the supermarket" tends to stay in the supermarket. The useful step is asking what it says about the belief more broadly: "the problem is anxiety, not fainting," "people respond to what I say, not how nervous I sound," "I am safer than I feel."

Keep a line. One sentence you can reread. "I ran up the stairs with my heart racing and stayed upright." "I asked unrehearsed and the room just answered." Flashcards like this, reread when the fear returns, are a simple way to make learning stick.

Listen for the doubt. "It went fine, but only because it was a small group." That doubt is your next experiment.

Repetition and variety

Work on how fear is unlearned, led by Michelle Craske, points to a few things that make learning durable.

Expectancy violation. The bigger the gap between what you expected and what happened, the stronger the learning. Precise predictions make the gap visible.
Repetition, spaced out. Several experiments over days beat one long one. Rowe and Craske found that spacing sessions reduced the return of fear.
Variety. Different places, times, people, and versions of the situation. Fear learned in one context does not automatically transfer. Varied practice helps it generalize.
Removing safety signals. Objects and people that stand in for safety count too: the bottle of water, the friend by the door.
Rehearsal afterwards. Deliberately recalling what happened, and what it means, in the days that follow.

The frequency matters. Research on homework in CBT consistently finds that people who do more between-session practice improve more. The Centre for Clinical Interventions puts it plainly: several experiments a week is the most helpful approach.

Golden opportunities

Not every experiment needs a plan. When you notice the urge to avoid something small, you can make a quick prediction in your head, drop the safety behavior, and watch. A minute or two is often enough. Record it afterwards. This app's quick experiment is built for exactly that.

Common pitfalls

Judging by feelings. "That was awful" is not an outcome. Ask whether the prediction came true.
Quiet safety behaviors. A chair placed just off screen, a hand hovering near the railing. If the belief did not shift, look for one you kept.
Self-criticism. "I could not even do that properly" turns a success into evidence for the fear. Notice the critical voice as one more thing happening, rather than taking it as a verdict.
Not believing the evidence. "They were just being polite." Ask what it would say about a person if they really did reject someone for blushing, and whether that is someone whose opinion should count.

Warnock-Parkes and colleagues note that, when an experiment is set up well, the outcome is almost always better than the person predicted. Most of the work is in the setup.

References

Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., Zbozinek, T., & Vervliet, B. (2014). Maximizing exposure therapy: An inhibitory learning approach. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 58, 10–23. doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2014.04.006
Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Zbozinek, T. D., & Vervliet, B. (2022). Optimizing exposure therapy with an inhibitory retrieval approach and the OptEx Nexus. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 152, Article 104069. doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2022.104069
Craske, M. G., Kircanski, K., Zelikowsky, M., Mystkowski, J., Chowdhury, N., & Baker, A. (2008). Optimizing inhibitory learning during exposure therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(1), 5–27. doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.10.003
Foa, E. B., & Kozak, M. J. (1986). Emotional processing of fear: Exposure to corrective information. Psychological Bulletin, 99(1), 20–35. doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.99.1.20
Wells, A., & Papageorgiou, C. (1998). Social phobia: Effects of external attention on anxiety, negative beliefs, and perspective taking. Behavior Therapy, 29(3), 357–370. doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(98)80037-380037-3)
Rowe, M. K., & Craske, M. G. (1998). Effects of an expanding-spaced vs massed exposure schedule on fear reduction and return of fear. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36(7–8), 701–717. doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(97)10016-X10016-X)
Kazantzis, N., Whittington, C., Zelencich, L., Kyrios, M., Norton, P. J., & Hofmann, S. G. (2016). Quantity and quality of homework compliance: A meta-analysis of relations with outcome in cognitive behavior therapy. Behavior Therapy, 47(5), 755–772. doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2016.05.002
Weisman, J. S., & Rodebaugh, T. L. (2018). Exposure therapy augmentation: A review and extension of techniques informed by an inhibitory learning approach. Clinical Psychology Review, 59, 41–51. doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2017.10.010
Warnock-Parkes, E., Thew, G. R., Murray, H., Grey, N., Wild, J., Kerr, A., Smith, A., Stott, R., Ehlers, A., & Clark, D. M. (2025). Driving cognitive change: A guide to behavioural experiments in cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders and PTSD. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 54(6), 767–793. doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2025.2518427

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Educational content, not medical advice or a substitute for professional care. Ready to try it? Open the online worksheet or get the app.