A review on the effects of verbal instructions in human fear conditioning: Empirical findings, theoretical considerations, and future directions

•We provide a review of the effects of verbal instructions in human fear conditioning.•We consider the effects CS-US contingency instructions, without any CS-US pairings.•We also consider how verbal instructions modulate the effects of CS-US pairings.•The implications of this research for theories of fear learning are discussed.•We identify gaps in the literature and outline directions for future research.