Predicting return of fear following exposure therapy with an implicit measure of attitudes

► We applied a social psychological perspective on attitudes to understanding the effects of exposure therapy. ► Attitudes involve automatic and controlled processes and implicit measures tap the former. ► Return of fear (ROF) should be likely when automatically activated attitudes remain negative following treatment. ► As predicted, a Personalized Implicit Association Test following treatment predicted ROF at 1-month follow-up. ► Change in the automatic phobic attitude is an important goal of exposure therapy.