Exposure therapy is the treatment of choice for specific phobias but prolonged exposure to feared stimuli is strenuous and may lead to treatment dropout. Previous research has shown that repeated exposure to masked spiders was effective in reducing psychophysiological and behavioural fear responses, but appeared ineffective in changing subjective feelings towards spiders. The present study investigated in an unselected female sample if masked counterconditioning would be more effective in reducing the dislike of a spider compared to masked exposure per se, and if masked counterconditioning would also be more effective than a non-masked (common) counterconditioning procedure. Women with varying levels of spider aversion (N = 272) were randomly assigned to four conditions. Three pictures of a spider were always (counterconditioning) or never (exposure) followed by a smiling face. For half of the participants in each condition the spiders were masked. Results indicated that participants rated the spider more positively after both masked counterconditioning and masked exposure. However, the increase in valence after masked counterconditioning was not significantly larger than after mere masked exposure, or after non-masked counterconditioning. Thus, our findings show that repeated exposure to masked spider pictures is effective in reducing subjective spider aversion, but they provided no support for the anticipated added benefit of pairing the (masked) spider with positive stimuli.