Trigger Warnings
March 26, 2019 8:34 AM Subscribe
Trigger warnings do not work. "Trigger warnings are, at best, trivially helpful," writes a research team led by psychologist Mevagh Sanson of the University of Waikato. The paper finds they "have no effect, or might even work slightly in the direction of causing harm."
And, scene.
posted by SansPoint at 8:39 AM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
posted by SansPoint at 8:39 AM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
It's worth noting that the study participants did not include people with diagnosed psychological ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's possible these warnings could be helpful to that subset of the population.
Is we learning?
posted by nubs at 8:40 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
Is we learning?
posted by nubs at 8:40 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
I'm with entropone on the methodology of this. It seems part of a larger misunderstanding about the purpose of the TW. The opponents of, well, actually caring about anyone's feelings ever seem to be spinning them as apologies for the world being a difficult place. But they're not there so that comfortable people without history of trauma can pretend the world is without its monsters. They're there so that people who are specifically sensitive to a topic can know when to click away.
I feel like there is a more useful study to be done in whether simply putting a warning at the header to a piece has the same evocative effect on an individual's triggers as simply reading through to where the topic actually occurs. I don't know if there's a good way to do that within an ethical framework, however.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:40 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
I feel like there is a more useful study to be done in whether simply putting a warning at the header to a piece has the same evocative effect on an individual's triggers as simply reading through to where the topic actually occurs. I don't know if there's a good way to do that within an ethical framework, however.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:40 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
The actual research paper is here.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:46 AM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:46 AM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
How do you concoct and perform an entire study without ever running across even the vaguest notion of what the thing you're purportedly studying actually *is*?
posted by jacquilynne at 8:46 AM on March 26, 2019 [34 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 8:46 AM on March 26, 2019 [34 favorites]
The results showed a clear pattern. "People who saw trigger warnings, compared to people who did not, judged material to be similarly negative, felt similarly negative, experienced similarly frequent intrusive thoughts and avoidance, and comprehended subsequent material similarly well," the researchers report.
Did... did no one tell them that the whole point of the warning is to convince people not to watch the disturbing thing if they think it's going to be especially disturbing?
I keep reading further into the synopsis looking for the part where it suddenly clicks and their half-assed experimental design actually measures the effect they're supposedly trying to measure, and I keep rolling my eyes further and further back in my head. The actual paper is behind a paywall, but there's nothing in this article to suggest that they even begin to get it.
"Widespread adoption of trigger warnings in syllabi may promote this trend, tacitly encouraging students to turn to avoidance, thereby depriving them of opportunities to learn healthier ways to manage potential distress."
It's like if you go to hand someone an ice-cream cone, and they try to grab it by the ice cream.
posted by Mayor West at 8:47 AM on March 26, 2019 [57 favorites]
Did... did no one tell them that the whole point of the warning is to convince people not to watch the disturbing thing if they think it's going to be especially disturbing?
I keep reading further into the synopsis looking for the part where it suddenly clicks and their half-assed experimental design actually measures the effect they're supposedly trying to measure, and I keep rolling my eyes further and further back in my head. The actual paper is behind a paywall, but there's nothing in this article to suggest that they even begin to get it.
"Widespread adoption of trigger warnings in syllabi may promote this trend, tacitly encouraging students to turn to avoidance, thereby depriving them of opportunities to learn healthier ways to manage potential distress."
It's like if you go to hand someone an ice-cream cone, and they try to grab it by the ice cream.
posted by Mayor West at 8:47 AM on March 26, 2019 [57 favorites]
The point of having a trigger warning is to allow people with past trauma to either be prepared to encounter a trigger, or opt out of reading/watching the triggering work. This study, where people without past trauma go on to read the work regardless, might as well be about the effect of spoiler alerts as trigger warnings.
posted by mystikspyral at 8:47 AM on March 26, 2019 [70 favorites]
posted by mystikspyral at 8:47 AM on March 26, 2019 [70 favorites]
It's worth noting that the study participants did not include people with diagnosed psychological ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's possible these warnings could be helpful to that subset of the population.
I feel like a bit of a crank on the ways in which mental health strategies are decontextualized away from people who originally developed those strategies, applied to a general audience who don't really need them, and then dismissed as useless or worse because healthy straight white college kids don't really benefit.
But I'll note that few people gave a damn when content warnings were implemented as "parental advisories" and "ratings," or when shock media was segregated out to separate networks and late-night time slots.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:50 AM on March 26, 2019 [67 favorites]
I feel like a bit of a crank on the ways in which mental health strategies are decontextualized away from people who originally developed those strategies, applied to a general audience who don't really need them, and then dismissed as useless or worse because healthy straight white college kids don't really benefit.
But I'll note that few people gave a damn when content warnings were implemented as "parental advisories" and "ratings," or when shock media was segregated out to separate networks and late-night time slots.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 8:50 AM on March 26, 2019 [67 favorites]
So, now we have a bullshit paper that the edgebros can cite to give yet another reason they won't TW their horseshit. That's the opposite of good.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
(Not that they'd evere use a TW, of course, but now they have another weapon to use against people who want them.)
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
I appreciate trigger warnings greatly, and on encountering things that list stuff I have trauma about, I opt out of reading/watching it. Any movie or show with a lot of cops and the potential for police violence, I wait until a friend has seen it and can let me know how bad it's going to be for me. This means there are a lot of really great movies and shows I will never watch, like The Wire. Stuff that's maybe okay, I wait until I'm in an okay space and try it out in the daytime, preferably with a friend, and the understanding that we turn it off immediately if it's too much for me.
All this is to say that this study is terrible and entropone's comment up above is a perfect summary of how terrible it is.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:54 AM on March 26, 2019 [24 favorites]
All this is to say that this study is terrible and entropone's comment up above is a perfect summary of how terrible it is.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:54 AM on March 26, 2019 [24 favorites]
i particularly look forward to the people who claim that psychology is a bullshit pseudoscience also breathlessly citing this dumb study.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:58 AM on March 26, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by vogon_poet at 8:58 AM on March 26, 2019 [14 favorites]
i guess probably the study itself may not be that bad, it’s just being spun in a stupid way by the university PR department possibly with the help of the researchers.
posted by vogon_poet at 9:00 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by vogon_poet at 9:00 AM on March 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is definitely one of those subjects where bad faith is going to prevent any actually useful information from coming to light.
Obviously, trigger warnings aren't especially intended for Joe "no PTSD here!" Average, and I'm surprised that this researcher wouldn't understand that going in.
Of course, there are actual questions about trigger warnings that would be much harder to investigate: eg, do they demonstrably help people with PTSD? (How do you study that ethically? Is broad-based self-reporting good enough?) If, as this study seems to suggest, trigger warnings may actually create stress and anxiety for a majority population of non-PTSD-havers, is it significant enough stress to outweigh benefit to people with PTSD? Given that a trigger can be literally anything if it's associated with a trauma, are trigger warnings for obviously triggery topics of substantial benefit? (By which I mean, I know someone who is triggered by a relatively common smell but is not triggered by reading about assault of the type they experienced.)
Is there even enough research about triggers in everyday situations for people who have PTSD but are fairly high-functioning? I assume there's research about people whose triggers are seriously incapacitating; what about people who just...have a shitty hour or so?
~~
In any case, I think it's worth giving people a heads up about what they're going to read/see/discuss, because that allows people to make informed choices. I mean, maybe I don't want to take a class where we're going to see lots of rape imagery, right? Does that rise to the level of triggering for everyone who might prefer to avoid it? Maybe not; maybe we'll just hate the class and be depressed and angry and think about how we gave up taking "Europe's Little Ice Age" for this and wish we'd known in advance.
~~
I think that everyone knows and no one says that "trigger warning" is really often used as "racism warning", "misogyny warning", "homophobia warning", etc, and that the fight over trigger warnings is often a proxy fight over politics.
A casually misogynist professor, for instance, wants to stack his class with Manly Mid-Twentieth Century Rape Novels under the guise of "oh, well, women weren't really writing anything important, and men who didn't write rape fantasies weren't either" and gets upset when people say "put a trigger warning on it" because he does not want to be challenged on "everyone should accept that men kind of, you know, rape a lot" narratives. Putting a trigger warning on it is a way of saying "this is not normal, this is not cool, it may have literary and historical significance but it also has this huge drawback" and casually misogynist professor doesn't want to hear that.
I think that while trigger warnings absolutely have legit purposes for traumatized people, they are also part of a 21st century discourse that is pushed to legitimate left wing choices through medicalizing them - the sort of equivalent of saying "gay people are born that way, they can't help it, it's not fair to hate them".
I mean, TBH, I don't want to read, eg, a bunch of novels by straight men that are heavily about rape because I don't want to read them. They are repulsive to me and I think the canon formation narrative that centers them is not natural but political, phony and misogynist. What's more, if I do read those novels because I'm taking a survey class and it's reasonable that I read some of them, I don't want to just hand-wave away their content while talking about their form, or ignore how their models of masculinity are predicated on hatred and fear of women.
We should strive to understand trigger warnings at least in part so that they can be deployed appropriately with as much evidence as possible rather than being fought over in lieu of other and more direct conflict.
posted by Frowner at 9:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [48 favorites]
Obviously, trigger warnings aren't especially intended for Joe "no PTSD here!" Average, and I'm surprised that this researcher wouldn't understand that going in.
Of course, there are actual questions about trigger warnings that would be much harder to investigate: eg, do they demonstrably help people with PTSD? (How do you study that ethically? Is broad-based self-reporting good enough?) If, as this study seems to suggest, trigger warnings may actually create stress and anxiety for a majority population of non-PTSD-havers, is it significant enough stress to outweigh benefit to people with PTSD? Given that a trigger can be literally anything if it's associated with a trauma, are trigger warnings for obviously triggery topics of substantial benefit? (By which I mean, I know someone who is triggered by a relatively common smell but is not triggered by reading about assault of the type they experienced.)
Is there even enough research about triggers in everyday situations for people who have PTSD but are fairly high-functioning? I assume there's research about people whose triggers are seriously incapacitating; what about people who just...have a shitty hour or so?
~~
In any case, I think it's worth giving people a heads up about what they're going to read/see/discuss, because that allows people to make informed choices. I mean, maybe I don't want to take a class where we're going to see lots of rape imagery, right? Does that rise to the level of triggering for everyone who might prefer to avoid it? Maybe not; maybe we'll just hate the class and be depressed and angry and think about how we gave up taking "Europe's Little Ice Age" for this and wish we'd known in advance.
~~
I think that everyone knows and no one says that "trigger warning" is really often used as "racism warning", "misogyny warning", "homophobia warning", etc, and that the fight over trigger warnings is often a proxy fight over politics.
A casually misogynist professor, for instance, wants to stack his class with Manly Mid-Twentieth Century Rape Novels under the guise of "oh, well, women weren't really writing anything important, and men who didn't write rape fantasies weren't either" and gets upset when people say "put a trigger warning on it" because he does not want to be challenged on "everyone should accept that men kind of, you know, rape a lot" narratives. Putting a trigger warning on it is a way of saying "this is not normal, this is not cool, it may have literary and historical significance but it also has this huge drawback" and casually misogynist professor doesn't want to hear that.
I think that while trigger warnings absolutely have legit purposes for traumatized people, they are also part of a 21st century discourse that is pushed to legitimate left wing choices through medicalizing them - the sort of equivalent of saying "gay people are born that way, they can't help it, it's not fair to hate them".
I mean, TBH, I don't want to read, eg, a bunch of novels by straight men that are heavily about rape because I don't want to read them. They are repulsive to me and I think the canon formation narrative that centers them is not natural but political, phony and misogynist. What's more, if I do read those novels because I'm taking a survey class and it's reasonable that I read some of them, I don't want to just hand-wave away their content while talking about their form, or ignore how their models of masculinity are predicated on hatred and fear of women.
We should strive to understand trigger warnings at least in part so that they can be deployed appropriately with as much evidence as possible rather than being fought over in lieu of other and more direct conflict.
posted by Frowner at 9:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [48 favorites]
i guess probably the study itself may not be that bad, it’s just being spun in a stupid way by the university PR department possibly with the help of the researchers.
Despite the fact that I had the opportunity for the first saucy comment, I lean in this direction. It's good to study things like this. Though this study certainly sounds flawed in what it's measuring and why, and media coverage of it seems to outpace its findings, it's not a total write-off and we shouldn't treat it like it is just cause we don't like its findings.
posted by entropone at 9:02 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
Despite the fact that I had the opportunity for the first saucy comment, I lean in this direction. It's good to study things like this. Though this study certainly sounds flawed in what it's measuring and why, and media coverage of it seems to outpace its findings, it's not a total write-off and we shouldn't treat it like it is just cause we don't like its findings.
posted by entropone at 9:02 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I wonder how much less pushback over TWs there would be if they were called Content Notes (as I've see on some sites). Seems like the idea of being triggered is something that requires a level of empathy lacking in a large portion of the population and the idea of warnings brings out the bully in a subset of those people.
posted by kokaku at 9:03 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 9:03 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Is it seriously surprising to anyone that trigger warnings don't really matter for people that don't have PTSD? The point of trigger warnings isn't to shield people from unpleasant or uncomfortable content, it's to help people who have involuntary and debilitating reactions to certain stimulus make informed decisions.
posted by cirgue at 9:15 AM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
posted by cirgue at 9:15 AM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
This makes me so angry, as both someone with PTSD and as a therapist. And also, like, I honestly feel pretty astonished--I mean, I expect this kind of discourse about trigger warnings from alt-right types and gamerbro assholes. But from psychological researchers? In a published study?
Please tell me this publication is one of those journals that has a terrible reputation and will publish almost anything.
posted by overglow at 9:22 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Please tell me this publication is one of those journals that has a terrible reputation and will publish almost anything.
posted by overglow at 9:22 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and part of my coping mechanism is exercising some conscious choices about how I'll interact with artistic works where sexual assault is discussed, rather than letting TV producers use that as shock value for people doing a cold read/viewing. So yeah, I can write a thousand words about Patti Smith's "Horses" or Kij Johnson's "Spar." (Big warnings for both.) "Black Mirror?" No.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 9:29 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 9:29 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
Once you read the discussion and see how small the sample is of people who have experienced trauma related to the material they were warned about (n=22?!?), I would not extrapolate anything about the usefulness of trigger warnings from this paper. Shitheads, well, hopefully I cannot speak for shitheads.
posted by wellred at 9:31 AM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by wellred at 9:31 AM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
I, too, am frustrated that some faculty in U.S. colleges and universities seem to believe that making students uncomfortable is a goal in and of itself instead of properly understanding that some learning is accompanied or preceded by discomfort caused by dissonance. This is particularly clear to me when I contrast this study with a new journal article in the new issue of The Journal of College Student Development, one of the leading journals in higher education. Examining the Role of Discomfort in Collegiate Learning and Development by Kary Taylor and Amanda Baker is a literature review on the role of discomfort in adult learning in which the authors review the literature around the role of discomfort in learning and draw a contrast between discomfort and dissonance. They caution educators from (a) always assuming that discomfort is evidence of learning, (b) creating dissonance without also providing support, and (c) enshrining discomfort or dissonance alone as a learning outcome. I’ve just begun reading the article but it’s an important topic and what I’ve read so far is really good.
If you are at an institution that subscribes to this journal, you can find the full article at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/719745.
(I'm not trying to promote this journal, these authors, or this article; I literally sent an e-mail to my colleagues that is nearly identical with my message above yesterday after I began reading the journal article. It's very timely.)
posted by ElKevbo at 9:37 AM on March 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
If you are at an institution that subscribes to this journal, you can find the full article at https://muse.jhu.edu/article/719745.
(I'm not trying to promote this journal, these authors, or this article; I literally sent an e-mail to my colleagues that is nearly identical with my message above yesterday after I began reading the journal article. It's very timely.)
posted by ElKevbo at 9:37 AM on March 26, 2019 [13 favorites]
So, I have feelings about this as someone with diagnosed PTSD who appreciates the idea of content warnings/trigger warnings but also thinks they can occasionally be harmful.
One of the major impacts of PTSD is avoidance. Your brain, naturally, wants to protect you from the situation that occurred, so it strongly wants you to head away from every subject that may be tangentially related so the thoughts about the terrible thing don’t come up. The thing is, this is one of the unhealthy coping behaviors that does more harm than good and ultimately makes your PTSD worse.
There is a reason that most of the evidence-based treatment for PTSD involves learning to desensitize yourself to your triggers, or the memories - so you can process through them and get to a place where they aren’t destroying your life.
I like trigger warnings as a “brace yourself, danger lies ahead”, but they are mostly as I see them used as a “it’s okay to avoid this because it may contain a trigger” which actually tells people that avoidance is healthy and good. I would be more interested to see research on whether people with PTSD found the experience less stressful from having a content warning before reading or not.
posted by corb at 10:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [20 favorites]
One of the major impacts of PTSD is avoidance. Your brain, naturally, wants to protect you from the situation that occurred, so it strongly wants you to head away from every subject that may be tangentially related so the thoughts about the terrible thing don’t come up. The thing is, this is one of the unhealthy coping behaviors that does more harm than good and ultimately makes your PTSD worse.
There is a reason that most of the evidence-based treatment for PTSD involves learning to desensitize yourself to your triggers, or the memories - so you can process through them and get to a place where they aren’t destroying your life.
I like trigger warnings as a “brace yourself, danger lies ahead”, but they are mostly as I see them used as a “it’s okay to avoid this because it may contain a trigger” which actually tells people that avoidance is healthy and good. I would be more interested to see research on whether people with PTSD found the experience less stressful from having a content warning before reading or not.
posted by corb at 10:01 AM on March 26, 2019 [20 favorites]
The bullshit starts on the very first line: "Universities around the world are grappling with demands for trigger warnings".
No, bigots and their enablers in school faculty, administrations, and among the student body are the ones grappling with trigger warnings. That the authors of the study blindly parroted their rhetoric from the get-go and then tried to present it as fact under the guise of (bad) science is just more of the same.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:05 AM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
No, bigots and their enablers in school faculty, administrations, and among the student body are the ones grappling with trigger warnings. That the authors of the study blindly parroted their rhetoric from the get-go and then tried to present it as fact under the guise of (bad) science is just more of the same.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:05 AM on March 26, 2019 [19 favorites]
corb: There is a reason that most of the evidence-based treatment for PTSD involves learning to desensitize yourself to your triggers, or the memories - so you can process through them and get to a place where they aren’t destroying your life.
100% correct, but it's always been my understanding that the desensitization process has to be controlled. Nobody would drop a shell-shocked veteran off at a 4th of July Fireworks show, and say "Good luck!" The value of trigger warnings in this case are to help people with that controlled exposure and desensitization.
posted by SansPoint at 10:07 AM on March 26, 2019 [40 favorites]
100% correct, but it's always been my understanding that the desensitization process has to be controlled. Nobody would drop a shell-shocked veteran off at a 4th of July Fireworks show, and say "Good luck!" The value of trigger warnings in this case are to help people with that controlled exposure and desensitization.
posted by SansPoint at 10:07 AM on March 26, 2019 [40 favorites]
But I'll note that few people gave a damn when content warnings were implemented as "parental advisories" and "ratings," or when shock media was segregated out to separate networks and late-night time slots.
But that was about us deciding for other people whether they should be allowed to watch something whereas trigger warnings are about us letting other people decide for themselves whether they want to watch something.
posted by straight at 10:16 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
But that was about us deciding for other people whether they should be allowed to watch something whereas trigger warnings are about us letting other people decide for themselves whether they want to watch something.
posted by straight at 10:16 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
There is a reason that most of the evidence-based treatment for PTSD involves learning to desensitize yourself to your triggers, or the memories - so you can process through them and get to a place where they aren’t destroying your life.
I like trigger warnings as a “brace yourself, danger lies ahead”, but they are mostly as I see them used as a “it’s okay to avoid this because it may contain a trigger” which actually tells people that avoidance is healthy and good. I would be more interested to see research on whether people with PTSD found the experience less stressful from having a content warning before reading or not.
Surely the mature thing is to simply give the warning and let people decide for themselves whether it means "brace yourself, danger lies ahead" or "avoid this if you don't wanna deal with it right now."
Doesn't desensitization usually involve purposefully and deliberately facing the thing that triggers you rather than having it randomly sprung on you by surprise?
posted by straight at 10:19 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
I like trigger warnings as a “brace yourself, danger lies ahead”, but they are mostly as I see them used as a “it’s okay to avoid this because it may contain a trigger” which actually tells people that avoidance is healthy and good. I would be more interested to see research on whether people with PTSD found the experience less stressful from having a content warning before reading or not.
Surely the mature thing is to simply give the warning and let people decide for themselves whether it means "brace yourself, danger lies ahead" or "avoid this if you don't wanna deal with it right now."
Doesn't desensitization usually involve purposefully and deliberately facing the thing that triggers you rather than having it randomly sprung on you by surprise?
posted by straight at 10:19 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Well, yeah, the paternalism is the same - parental advisories and not allowing trigger warnings are the dudes in charge assuming they know what's best for everyone.
posted by wellred at 10:26 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by wellred at 10:26 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
Yeah, exposure therapy has to be graded, which means you need to experience exposures according to a hierarchy that you define ahead of time with a therapist. Otherwise it can actually be counterproductive.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:27 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by en forme de poire at 10:27 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
It's worth noting that the study participants did not include people with diagnosed psychological ailments such as post-traumatic stress disorder. It's possible these warnings could be helpful to that subset of the population.
So the purpose of this post is just to shit on this study now, right? Because this is worse than useless.
posted by lazaruslong at 10:29 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
So the purpose of this post is just to shit on this study now, right? Because this is worse than useless.
posted by lazaruslong at 10:29 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Sure, yes, exposure therapy can be a part of healing for PTSD. But...
Are college classrooms appropriate places to do psychotherapy? Are college professors and instructors aware of and trained in the methods for facilitating safe, effective exposure therapy? Can the needs and differing treatment requirements of an entire classroom full of people, who may have varying types of trauma, be met all at the same time?
posted by overglow at 10:31 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Are college classrooms appropriate places to do psychotherapy? Are college professors and instructors aware of and trained in the methods for facilitating safe, effective exposure therapy? Can the needs and differing treatment requirements of an entire classroom full of people, who may have varying types of trauma, be met all at the same time?
posted by overglow at 10:31 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Participants who saw trigger warnings before reading or watching upsetting content felt as negative afterwards as those who did not.
Thats...not the point of a trigger warning. The point is to allow people to make informed decisions about whether or not they want to engage with the content, not to mitigate feelings for everyone who reads it. This whole thing is just bullshit, to put it frankly.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:38 AM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
Thats...not the point of a trigger warning. The point is to allow people to make informed decisions about whether or not they want to engage with the content, not to mitigate feelings for everyone who reads it. This whole thing is just bullshit, to put it frankly.
posted by FirstMateKate at 10:38 AM on March 26, 2019 [11 favorites]
Oh jesus, they didn't even subset out PTSD in the experiment where they bothered to ask about trauma. They're very smug when they say that most of their sample had experienced at least one high-magnitude stressor (true), then they go in further and announce smugly that half of that sample has persisting post-traumatic distress, which is defined as something that emotionally bothered the person for a month or more. It's correlated with PTSD symptoms, but not synonymous, and they never bother to ask about actual PTSD symptoms. And that is their "highly traumatized" sample set.
And when they bothered checking whether warnings help in people whose trauma actually matches the warned-for topic they used car accidents as their focus, which is an unusual sort of trauma in that it gets a lot of support and understanding post-accident. That means that PTSD is less likely to set in than for traumas in which the victim is blamed or not supported post-trauma. It's also totally irrelevant to the discussion of trigger warnings, which are typically discussed in the contest of rape or domestic violence or other deliberate violence, not accidents. And these fuckers--they got plenty of sample respondents who did have histories of that kind of trauma! But car accidents, that's their focus!
This experiment is garbage.
posted by sciatrix at 10:42 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
And when they bothered checking whether warnings help in people whose trauma actually matches the warned-for topic they used car accidents as their focus, which is an unusual sort of trauma in that it gets a lot of support and understanding post-accident. That means that PTSD is less likely to set in than for traumas in which the victim is blamed or not supported post-trauma. It's also totally irrelevant to the discussion of trigger warnings, which are typically discussed in the contest of rape or domestic violence or other deliberate violence, not accidents. And these fuckers--they got plenty of sample respondents who did have histories of that kind of trauma! But car accidents, that's their focus!
This experiment is garbage.
posted by sciatrix at 10:42 AM on March 26, 2019 [32 favorites]
Most of the things we attach warnings to are the largely ephemeral and almost entirely voluntary products of a mass-media culture that's producing more work than any single person can interact with. My life is not materially harmed because I don't watch "Westworld" or "Game of Thrones." I'm not less informed because I prefer to read news stories in text form, than be read to by an overly emoting talking head. And they are radically different situations from avoiding public spaces due to hypervigilance, just as an example.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:43 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:43 AM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
Most of the things we attach warnings to are the largely ephemeral and almost entirely voluntary products of a mass-media culture that's producing more work than any single person can interact with.
This is totally true. I think that it's worth discussing trigger warnings carefully in the context of educational use, though, when we ask students to consume materials that are not voluntary, that are chosen for them by an authority figure. Is the trauma trigger necessary to the skill we want the student to learn? If it is--and for some things, particularly history, it is--then a trigger warning that is presented as a warning to brace rather than a release from the material is worth it. If the trauma trigger isn't necessary, perhaps instructors can be nudged to consider other materials that will help the student develop the same skills, as Frowner points out.
This isn't fucking hard, but you wouldn't know it from the size of the pearls certain parties clutch at the entire concept. It's also the approach I usually see championed from instructors encouraging the use of trigger warnings in a classroom setting, while people criticizing the use of trigger warnings in a classroom setting seem to focus on the use of trigger warnings as a flag to notify certain students they totally disengage from the material. I don't... actually know that I've seen any educator support that approach, though.
posted by sciatrix at 10:50 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
This is totally true. I think that it's worth discussing trigger warnings carefully in the context of educational use, though, when we ask students to consume materials that are not voluntary, that are chosen for them by an authority figure. Is the trauma trigger necessary to the skill we want the student to learn? If it is--and for some things, particularly history, it is--then a trigger warning that is presented as a warning to brace rather than a release from the material is worth it. If the trauma trigger isn't necessary, perhaps instructors can be nudged to consider other materials that will help the student develop the same skills, as Frowner points out.
This isn't fucking hard, but you wouldn't know it from the size of the pearls certain parties clutch at the entire concept. It's also the approach I usually see championed from instructors encouraging the use of trigger warnings in a classroom setting, while people criticizing the use of trigger warnings in a classroom setting seem to focus on the use of trigger warnings as a flag to notify certain students they totally disengage from the material. I don't... actually know that I've seen any educator support that approach, though.
posted by sciatrix at 10:50 AM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
I think from my own experience, what I’ve seen from educators has been variant depending on the sympathy they gave to the perceived trigger. One particularly illuminating aspect for me is that the significant aspect of my trigger comes from DV/sexual violence, but I was also a soldier. So professors informed I had PTSD bent over backwards to accommodate my perceived combat trauma, but the ones I informed that no, it was interpersonal violence, became immediately less sympathetic. And they would offer to excuse me entirely from war films, discussion of war, etc, while being “well maybe you can get through it” for sexual violence. Which /also/ isn’t great.
To;dr this shit is complex.
posted by corb at 11:03 AM on March 26, 2019 [33 favorites]
To;dr this shit is complex.
posted by corb at 11:03 AM on March 26, 2019 [33 favorites]
I think that while trigger warnings absolutely have legit purposes for traumatized people, they are also part of a 21st century discourse that is pushed to legitimate left wing choices through medicalizing them
Counterpoint: I live with the constant nagging fear that conservatives will "discover" one of my medical conditions, politicize it, and interfere with my life out of a concern that something normal (therefore good) and traditional (ditto) has been "medicalized".
posted by traveler_ at 11:07 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
Counterpoint: I live with the constant nagging fear that conservatives will "discover" one of my medical conditions, politicize it, and interfere with my life out of a concern that something normal (therefore good) and traditional (ditto) has been "medicalized".
posted by traveler_ at 11:07 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
I think there's a lot of discussion among educators about how to support discussion of sensitive or disturbing subjects in the classroom. I'm not sure the usual argument that warnings spoil the cold read/view necessarily applies to educational reads where we encourage students to do analytical critique of form and content. For me, warnings can help in getting that critical distance. I still respond emotionally as a reader, but I'm also prepared to work with the text.
But I'm a frustrated reader (and writer) who demands more and better. So yes, I do read/watch the stuff I want warnings for when I'm willing and able to do the emotional and critical work required. I think the avoidance aspect is highly overstated. And I feel a bit of hypocrisy in that conservatives have been demanding warnings and opt-outs for stuff that hurts their precious political feels for years.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:16 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
But I'm a frustrated reader (and writer) who demands more and better. So yes, I do read/watch the stuff I want warnings for when I'm willing and able to do the emotional and critical work required. I think the avoidance aspect is highly overstated. And I feel a bit of hypocrisy in that conservatives have been demanding warnings and opt-outs for stuff that hurts their precious political feels for years.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:16 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
I don't feel like content warnings are primarily about medicalization, but about respect and power.
In my experience, teens in some corners of fandoms have been informed that almost nobody is comfortable with all graphic violence or porn, and almost nobody's tolerance is constant all the time. To navigate around this, spaces like Ao3 encourage people to label content accurately, to enable constructive interaction with sensitive work. Like, maybe I don't want to read X-rated BDSM on a crowded train full of kids, or gory horror late at night when I'm trying to fall asleep. Those desires to contextualize content consumption are, I think, a bigger deal when you have a smartphone and could theoretically read anything, anytime, anywhere.
Content warnings are also a bigger deal when consumers' attitudes towards creators are relatively demanding - there's more out here than I'm ever going to have time to read, so you need to demonstrate that my experience of your content matters for me to not click away. Choosing to label a work "No Archive Warnings Apply" when that's not true - lying to me outside the context of the story - is shitty and rude and suggests you think your ability to upset people unexpectedly is more important than their ability to brace themselves or self-select out. Choosing "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" - announcing that you prefer not to warn, rather than lying - is an entirely more reasonable way to handle twists and surprises.
Coming from that corner, I would be dismayed to be told by a literature or media studies professor that he cannot deal with content warnings, they're too hard. If I were paying $$$$$ for him to teach me about thinking and talking about content, that would absolutely have prompted me to drop the class. I mean, if that's accurate, I've known people who were punching above this clown's weight class when they were fourteen, and I struggle to comprehend why he has a job beyond inertia.
posted by bagel at 11:35 AM on March 26, 2019 [16 favorites]
In my experience, teens in some corners of fandoms have been informed that almost nobody is comfortable with all graphic violence or porn, and almost nobody's tolerance is constant all the time. To navigate around this, spaces like Ao3 encourage people to label content accurately, to enable constructive interaction with sensitive work. Like, maybe I don't want to read X-rated BDSM on a crowded train full of kids, or gory horror late at night when I'm trying to fall asleep. Those desires to contextualize content consumption are, I think, a bigger deal when you have a smartphone and could theoretically read anything, anytime, anywhere.
Content warnings are also a bigger deal when consumers' attitudes towards creators are relatively demanding - there's more out here than I'm ever going to have time to read, so you need to demonstrate that my experience of your content matters for me to not click away. Choosing to label a work "No Archive Warnings Apply" when that's not true - lying to me outside the context of the story - is shitty and rude and suggests you think your ability to upset people unexpectedly is more important than their ability to brace themselves or self-select out. Choosing "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings" - announcing that you prefer not to warn, rather than lying - is an entirely more reasonable way to handle twists and surprises.
Coming from that corner, I would be dismayed to be told by a literature or media studies professor that he cannot deal with content warnings, they're too hard. If I were paying $$$$$ for him to teach me about thinking and talking about content, that would absolutely have prompted me to drop the class. I mean, if that's accurate, I've known people who were punching above this clown's weight class when they were fourteen, and I struggle to comprehend why he has a job beyond inertia.
posted by bagel at 11:35 AM on March 26, 2019 [16 favorites]
Can we start this discussion by reading the paper, not the article?
It turns out that a paper by psychologists who specialise in traumatic memory might have already considered all the points raised in this discussion. This research isn't the final word on this topic. It's a necessary step to understanding the value or not of trigger warnings.
For the paper's conclusion:
"Taken together, our findings show that trigger warnings are at best trivially helpful. But this conclusion comes with at least three caveats and limitations. First, we did not recruit people with a history of psychopathology (e.g., those with a diagnosis of PTSD, anxiety, or depression), and so we do not know how well our results generalize to clinical populations (although the results of Experiment 4 fit with the idea that most of our subjects—like most of the population—have had a traumatic experience; Breslau et al., 1998). Second, we did not ask our subjects their socioeconomic status or education level, which limits our ability to characterize the samples on whom we tested the effects of trigger warnings. Our samples were, however, drawn from populations for whom trigger warnings are often provided. Third, trigger warnings may have nontrivial effects we did not measure. For example, we did not ask about the phenomenology of the intrusions, yet warnings may have altered the vividness of the intrusions, for instance (Takarangi & Strange, 2010). Further, we used only self-report measures rather than taking physiological measures of hyperarousal symptoms, for instance (APA, 2013). Indeed, when people can precisely predict the timing of an unpleasant experience (e.g., an electric shock), they have lesser physiological responses to it even though their ratings of its magnitude are unaffected (Lykken, Macindoe, & Tellegen, 1972; for a review, see Lykken & Tellegen, 1974). It is possible, therefore, that if trigger warnings allow people to predict an encounter with negative material, those warnings may reduce people’s physiological responses to the negative material. These issues constitute interesting directions for future research"
posted by happyinmotion at 11:35 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
It turns out that a paper by psychologists who specialise in traumatic memory might have already considered all the points raised in this discussion. This research isn't the final word on this topic. It's a necessary step to understanding the value or not of trigger warnings.
For the paper's conclusion:
"Taken together, our findings show that trigger warnings are at best trivially helpful. But this conclusion comes with at least three caveats and limitations. First, we did not recruit people with a history of psychopathology (e.g., those with a diagnosis of PTSD, anxiety, or depression), and so we do not know how well our results generalize to clinical populations (although the results of Experiment 4 fit with the idea that most of our subjects—like most of the population—have had a traumatic experience; Breslau et al., 1998). Second, we did not ask our subjects their socioeconomic status or education level, which limits our ability to characterize the samples on whom we tested the effects of trigger warnings. Our samples were, however, drawn from populations for whom trigger warnings are often provided. Third, trigger warnings may have nontrivial effects we did not measure. For example, we did not ask about the phenomenology of the intrusions, yet warnings may have altered the vividness of the intrusions, for instance (Takarangi & Strange, 2010). Further, we used only self-report measures rather than taking physiological measures of hyperarousal symptoms, for instance (APA, 2013). Indeed, when people can precisely predict the timing of an unpleasant experience (e.g., an electric shock), they have lesser physiological responses to it even though their ratings of its magnitude are unaffected (Lykken, Macindoe, & Tellegen, 1972; for a review, see Lykken & Tellegen, 1974). It is possible, therefore, that if trigger warnings allow people to predict an encounter with negative material, those warnings may reduce people’s physiological responses to the negative material. These issues constitute interesting directions for future research"
posted by happyinmotion at 11:35 AM on March 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
i have found the "do you really want to force veterans to watch war films" angle to be rhetorically useful when arguing in favor of trigger warnings, but I guess if people are somehow capable of the mental contortions to accept that while discounting all other causes of PTSD, maybe it's actually a bad way to argue for them overall.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:36 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by vogon_poet at 11:36 AM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
The paper's own abstract concludes with:
posted by straight at 11:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful.Which is irresponsibly wrong and bad.
posted by straight at 11:51 AM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
Happyinmotion, I don't see how any of that addresses the criticism that trigger warnings are meant to help people avoid reading/viewing material that might trigger them.
The study seems to be predicated on the idea that the warning could possibly make the experience of reading the material less traumatizing. I'm not saying that's not plausible or isn't an effect worth testing. But it is significantly separate from the primary use case for trigger warnings, and to describe trigger warnings as 'at best trivially helpful' based on a study that does not in any way address people NOT reading the subject material is either ridiculous incompetence or deliberately misleading.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:57 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
The study seems to be predicated on the idea that the warning could possibly make the experience of reading the material less traumatizing. I'm not saying that's not plausible or isn't an effect worth testing. But it is significantly separate from the primary use case for trigger warnings, and to describe trigger warnings as 'at best trivially helpful' based on a study that does not in any way address people NOT reading the subject material is either ridiculous incompetence or deliberately misleading.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:57 AM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
The authors are quotes in the article, they've already decided that trigger warnings coddle millenials. These scientista are the ones being triggered.
Also, the article is wrong. Trigger warnings help people decide if they want to see something. IMDB has a special page for each movie for parents for content advisories. It's the same idea.
posted by polymodus at 12:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
Also, the article is wrong. Trigger warnings help people decide if they want to see something. IMDB has a special page for each movie for parents for content advisories. It's the same idea.
posted by polymodus at 12:01 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
The whole point of trigger warnings is not whether they are generally useful to people. The point is whether there exist any people for whom they are useful and whether we give a damn about being kind to those people.
This study is like measuring the average time it takes college students to get into a building with or without wheelchair ramps. And excluding people who use wheelchairs. "We find that wheelchair ramps are neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful."
posted by straight at 12:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [28 favorites]
This study is like measuring the average time it takes college students to get into a building with or without wheelchair ramps. And excluding people who use wheelchairs. "We find that wheelchair ramps are neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful."
posted by straight at 12:02 PM on March 26, 2019 [28 favorites]
Please tell me this publication is one of those journals that has a terrible reputation and will publish almost anything.
I'm not in the field but the journal it is published in, Clinical Psychological Science, is ranked 5th for academic journals in Clinical Psychology in terms of impact factor sooooo....sorry. It appears to be legit.
I cannot honestly tell you why a journal with such a high impact factor would publish this with such an obvious construct validity error.
posted by Young Kullervo at 12:07 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm not in the field but the journal it is published in, Clinical Psychological Science, is ranked 5th for academic journals in Clinical Psychology in terms of impact factor sooooo....sorry. It appears to be legit.
I cannot honestly tell you why a journal with such a high impact factor would publish this with such an obvious construct validity error.
posted by Young Kullervo at 12:07 PM on March 26, 2019 [4 favorites]
Can we start this discussion by reading the paper, not the article?
happyinmotion, it looks like in your rush to try and dunk on people for commenting without reading the paper, you commented without reading the comment thread. Much of what you bolded has been mentioned here already. We can read, and don't need the condescension. Nothing of what you wrote changes the fact that this study is garbage and the article describing it is as well.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:11 PM on March 26, 2019 [25 favorites]
happyinmotion, it looks like in your rush to try and dunk on people for commenting without reading the paper, you commented without reading the comment thread. Much of what you bolded has been mentioned here already. We can read, and don't need the condescension. Nothing of what you wrote changes the fact that this study is garbage and the article describing it is as well.
posted by lazaruslong at 12:11 PM on March 26, 2019 [25 favorites]
"These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful."
... is not the same statement as:
"a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful"
This is one research paper and needs to be read in that context. It isn't a definitive answer. It isn't even addressing all of the questions about trigger warnings, eg whether trigger warnings are useful in course material that students do not have the option of avoiding.
If we're going to have or not have trigger warnings and we're going to make that decision based on evidence, then that evidence needs to be credible and thorough. That's not just one randomised controlled trial. That's not just several comparable papers. That's not just cohort studies or case-controlled studies or time-series studies. That evidence requires at least a systematic review of work that takes into account systematic bias, confounding, and the heap of other factors that effect the quality of data.
No-one should draw clinical conclusions from a single paper. In psychology especially, given their replication crisis, no-one should draw any conclusions at all from a single paper.
posted by happyinmotion at 12:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
... is not the same statement as:
"a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful"
This is one research paper and needs to be read in that context. It isn't a definitive answer. It isn't even addressing all of the questions about trigger warnings, eg whether trigger warnings are useful in course material that students do not have the option of avoiding.
If we're going to have or not have trigger warnings and we're going to make that decision based on evidence, then that evidence needs to be credible and thorough. That's not just one randomised controlled trial. That's not just several comparable papers. That's not just cohort studies or case-controlled studies or time-series studies. That evidence requires at least a systematic review of work that takes into account systematic bias, confounding, and the heap of other factors that effect the quality of data.
No-one should draw clinical conclusions from a single paper. In psychology especially, given their replication crisis, no-one should draw any conclusions at all from a single paper.
posted by happyinmotion at 12:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's frustrating to see the media sensationalize soft science in this way. The scientists are just as guilty when they can't separate their political biases when drawing conclusions.
posted by polymodus at 12:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by polymodus at 12:17 PM on March 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
I don't care how "unhelpful" any paper says trigger warnings are. I know that when I see one for depression and/or suicide, that I can judge if I can handle the discussion and proceed forward. Versus when I don't know and stumble across the topic in a discussion and end up in a week-long depression spiral.
One anecdote does not data make, but it's also one data point that's against the conclusion drawn.
posted by evilangela at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
One anecdote does not data make, but it's also one data point that's against the conclusion drawn.
posted by evilangela at 12:26 PM on March 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
"These results suggest a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful."
... is not the same statement as:
"a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful"
and of course neither is the same as
"These results suggest trigger warnings might not have easily-measurable short-term self-reported effects on populations outside the primary groups trigger warnings are intended to help."
posted by straight at 12:33 PM on March 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
... is not the same statement as:
"a trigger warning is neither meaningfully helpful nor harmful"
and of course neither is the same as
"These results suggest trigger warnings might not have easily-measurable short-term self-reported effects on populations outside the primary groups trigger warnings are intended to help."
posted by straight at 12:33 PM on March 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
I'd really like to see a study to see if they do help people with PTSD and such. It's being treated as if it were a given, but I've not seen any evidence supporting that notion, and anecdotally it seems to go either way. If it's helpful, great, I'll support it, if not, then it can buzz off. For now I'm maintaining my fairly neutral position of "It's annoying and at time seems detrimental in some small ways but if it's helpful to people it's intended to help I'll put up with it" until it can be better determined if it's helping anyone or not.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:13 PM on March 26, 2019
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:13 PM on March 26, 2019
“it’s okay to avoid this because it may contain a trigger” which actually tells people that avoidance is healthy and good.
as someone who has PTSD in part FROM exposure therapy (a truly terrible situation and I have never met anyone who had this so, if you're out there, let me know I guess! But I'm sure we're out there!), I probably have an interesting perspective on this. "It's okay to avoid the trigger" has been revolutionary in my life to an extent I can't explain. Just having that permission, having a structure in place that's psychologically supported a lot of the time and society is aware of, means a lot. Graded exposure is important and exposure with a professional is important, but the reality is sometimes exposure is just not possible without destroying a person, and knowing I do not have to destroy myself even when I do not believe that and to have that be a conversation is extraordinary, for someone whom avoidance is keeping alive.
posted by colorblock sock at 1:52 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
as someone who has PTSD in part FROM exposure therapy (a truly terrible situation and I have never met anyone who had this so, if you're out there, let me know I guess! But I'm sure we're out there!), I probably have an interesting perspective on this. "It's okay to avoid the trigger" has been revolutionary in my life to an extent I can't explain. Just having that permission, having a structure in place that's psychologically supported a lot of the time and society is aware of, means a lot. Graded exposure is important and exposure with a professional is important, but the reality is sometimes exposure is just not possible without destroying a person, and knowing I do not have to destroy myself even when I do not believe that and to have that be a conversation is extraordinary, for someone whom avoidance is keeping alive.
posted by colorblock sock at 1:52 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
I cannot honestly tell you why a journal with such a high impact factor would publish this with such an obvious construct validity error.
I'd imagine that it's the result of the academy's Spartan streak, once again. Academia seems to hate the concept of trigger warnings, from what I've seen.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:09 PM on March 26, 2019
I'd imagine that it's the result of the academy's Spartan streak, once again. Academia seems to hate the concept of trigger warnings, from what I've seen.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:09 PM on March 26, 2019
colorblock sock, I don't think you're alone; not me, but a friend was almost certainly retraumatized by a bad therapist, which just makes me furious every time I think about it
posted by epersonae at 2:14 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by epersonae at 2:14 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
No-one should draw clinical conclusions from a single paper. In psychology especially, given their replication crisis, no-one should draw any conclusions at all from a single paper.
Yes, this. Instead of everyone clutching their pearls about "yay trigger warnings" or "boo trigger warnings," let's just all admit that we do not actually know for sure what their utility is. This paper is neither bullshit nor conclusive. It is a single paper.
The lack of PTSD patients is obviously a huge deficiency. But the study nonetheless tells us more than we knew before about the effects of trigger warnings. Let's wait for an actual study of how trigger warnings effect PTSD patients, and then revisit the topic.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:18 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yes, this. Instead of everyone clutching their pearls about "yay trigger warnings" or "boo trigger warnings," let's just all admit that we do not actually know for sure what their utility is. This paper is neither bullshit nor conclusive. It is a single paper.
The lack of PTSD patients is obviously a huge deficiency. But the study nonetheless tells us more than we knew before about the effects of trigger warnings. Let's wait for an actual study of how trigger warnings effect PTSD patients, and then revisit the topic.
posted by andrewpcone at 2:18 PM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure if it does though. It almost seems like saying "We put 500 random people through chemotherapy, and all of them were the worse for wear afterward, therefore chemotherapy is worthless. Please note: Our study did not select for people with cancer."
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 2:44 PM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 2:44 PM on March 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
This paper is bullshit, to be clear, because it is surveying the effect of trigger warnings on a population of people who are not the people trigger warnings are intended to help. We assume there is no effect on these people. It is good to know that that has been confirmed.
And yes, not only have I read the paper, I read the motherfucking supplementals looking for the raw dataset so I could get a sense for how many of those subjects who had some traumatic experience relevant to the clip and did vs. did not get content warnings (22 vs 36) were in the car accident category or maybe whether they included people with experience with domestic violence there or what. I have read every single supplemental looking for that raw dataset. It is not there.
There is no discussion of the risk factors that lead to developing PTSD specifically as a result of trauma in this paper, and in particular there is no discussion of the risk factors associated with positive and negative social response to the trauma. Yet we know that initial negative responses shortly following trauma significantly increase the odds of developing PTSD. We also know that these initial negative responses are more likely for domestic violence than for car accidents.
These researchers not only took three experiments--three!--to look at previous trauma before testing the impact of trauma warnings, they also did not even bother to distinguish between two forms of trauma with very different levels of social support and potential negative commentary. In fact, according to their design in even this fourth study, they only appeared to look at this specific circumstance as a post-hoc analysis. That's not fucking good enough.
I am not attacking this paper because I dislike the conclusions. I am attacking this paper because I believe that it is poorly designed as a question of whether trigger warnings are efficacious to the populations we are advocating their use for. And that is a very, very different kettle of fish.
posted by sciatrix at 2:44 PM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
And yes, not only have I read the paper, I read the motherfucking supplementals looking for the raw dataset so I could get a sense for how many of those subjects who had some traumatic experience relevant to the clip and did vs. did not get content warnings (22 vs 36) were in the car accident category or maybe whether they included people with experience with domestic violence there or what. I have read every single supplemental looking for that raw dataset. It is not there.
There is no discussion of the risk factors that lead to developing PTSD specifically as a result of trauma in this paper, and in particular there is no discussion of the risk factors associated with positive and negative social response to the trauma. Yet we know that initial negative responses shortly following trauma significantly increase the odds of developing PTSD. We also know that these initial negative responses are more likely for domestic violence than for car accidents.
These researchers not only took three experiments--three!--to look at previous trauma before testing the impact of trauma warnings, they also did not even bother to distinguish between two forms of trauma with very different levels of social support and potential negative commentary. In fact, according to their design in even this fourth study, they only appeared to look at this specific circumstance as a post-hoc analysis. That's not fucking good enough.
I am not attacking this paper because I dislike the conclusions. I am attacking this paper because I believe that it is poorly designed as a question of whether trigger warnings are efficacious to the populations we are advocating their use for. And that is a very, very different kettle of fish.
posted by sciatrix at 2:44 PM on March 26, 2019 [31 favorites]
But the study nonetheless tells us more than we knew before about the effects of trigger warnings.
What, that they're not helpful to people who don't need them?
"We studied the value of ingredient labels on food boxes, and discovered that the labels had minimal impact on their choices, and that people mostly seemed somewhat annoyed with them. We did not, however, survey people with food allergies, specific nutritional needs, nor people who decided against buying foods based on their ingredient labels."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:45 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
What, that they're not helpful to people who don't need them?
Half of them saw trigger warnings before being exposed to the disquieting material, and half did not. Examples included "TRIGGER WARNING: The following story contains violence and death" and "TRIGGER WARNING: The following video may contain graphic footage. You may find this content disturbing."None of them got the warning and the ability to opt out of seeing the content. Also, none of them got a mix of content with and without the need for warnings.
"We studied the value of ingredient labels on food boxes, and discovered that the labels had minimal impact on their choices, and that people mostly seemed somewhat annoyed with them. We did not, however, survey people with food allergies, specific nutritional needs, nor people who decided against buying foods based on their ingredient labels."
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:45 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Mod note: A couple comments deleted. Folks, please don't come in here with "tut tut, let's be reasonable and believe in science, people reacting to this are just clutching pearls" without addressing the seemingly very basic and glaring methodological problems people have pointed out.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:56 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:56 PM on March 26, 2019 [10 favorites]
Even the method of testing it seems designed to encourage overreaction by the media. On US TV, content warnings usually have "Viewer Discretion is advised", not "TRIGGER WARNING". Even if they were testing the language in an academic setting, how many professors actually use TRIGGER WARNING (in large caps?!?), not "Content Advisory", or some other more neutral language? "TRIGGER WARNING: The following video blah blah blah" just screams to have a derisive SNOWFLAKE! added to the end, and seems to encourage overreaction by people who don't believe in "Trigger Warnings" aka content advisory.
I've been noticing that NPR has lately been adding a lot more advisories before stories that may cause a trigger. they don't start blaring "TRIGGER ALERT! TRIGGER ALERT", but just calmly mention that the audio footage may have sounds of gunfire, include a discussion of suicide, or domestic violence, or may not be suitable for younger listeners (usually when discussing prostitution or sex). I can't see how that sort of a statement would have the potential to cause harm in non-PTSD listeners.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 3:27 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
I've been noticing that NPR has lately been adding a lot more advisories before stories that may cause a trigger. they don't start blaring "TRIGGER ALERT! TRIGGER ALERT", but just calmly mention that the audio footage may have sounds of gunfire, include a discussion of suicide, or domestic violence, or may not be suitable for younger listeners (usually when discussing prostitution or sex). I can't see how that sort of a statement would have the potential to cause harm in non-PTSD listeners.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 3:27 PM on March 26, 2019 [15 favorites]
Even if the efficacy was a wash, I'd still argue for clear links, titles, and tags on things as a matter of courtesy and kindness. No, rickrolling me isn't going to give me a bad day, but it will make me think less of the person doing it.
For a lot of mass media, we have reviews so we don't necessarily need a warning that says "warning."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 3:35 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
For a lot of mass media, we have reviews so we don't necessarily need a warning that says "warning."
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 3:35 PM on March 26, 2019 [6 favorites]
"We studied the value of ingredient labels on food boxes, and discovered that the labels had minimal impact on their choices, and that people mostly seemed somewhat annoyed with them. We did not, however, survey people with food allergies, specific nutritional needs, nor people who decided against buying foods based on their ingredient labels."
Allergies are definitely the best metaphor I've found. I'm allergic to cats; it's not the cat's fault; there's nothing particularly bad about cats. But if I have to attend a three-hour lecture in a room full of cats, there are many problems.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:21 PM on March 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
Allergies are definitely the best metaphor I've found. I'm allergic to cats; it's not the cat's fault; there's nothing particularly bad about cats. But if I have to attend a three-hour lecture in a room full of cats, there are many problems.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 4:21 PM on March 26, 2019 [12 favorites]
I mean and there is such a thing as someone who doesn't have PTSD but is just sensitive, depressed, pms'd, having a bad day, etc, and unexpectedly seeing a guy get shot in the head out of nowhere will just wreck their whole shop for the rest of the day. As per that one day in Social Psychology in Film more than 10 years ago that I'll never forget. I don't think even thinking about this in terms of ptsd or not is good enough. This is the kind of adaptation that can help everyone.
posted by bleep at 5:12 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:12 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
A trigger warning is a basic acknowledgement that when you see or hear something there is some part of your brain that is processing it as if it's really happening now and not all brains will be in a good place to handle the internal repercussions of that. If you happen to be in a good place then you can control the vibrations. If you're not then you can't.
posted by bleep at 5:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by bleep at 5:22 PM on March 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
Half of them saw trigger warnings before being exposed to the disquieting material, and half did not. Examples included "TRIGGER WARNING: The following story contains violence and death" and "TRIGGER WARNING: The following video may contain graphic footage. You may find this content disturbing."But... the whole point of a trigger warning is to give people notice of a specific kind of potentially traumatising material so that people who have a problem with that particular trigger can avoid it. A generic "this might be scary" isn't a trigger warning, it's a caricature. If this is what all of their "trigger warnings" looked like, I'm leaning away from "incompetence" and towards the other explanation.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:29 PM on March 26, 2019 [9 favorites]
I read the original paper. I think there are a few criticisms raised in this thread that are unfair, but mostly I think it's not a good paper, and for many of the reasons raised here. In particular, the criticism that while the authors did include participants with related past traumatic experience, they were not studying a clinical population with PTSD or other trauma-related disorder, for whom we expect trigger warnings to be most beneficial. They did look at the subset of their population with "persistent posttraumatic distress" with some PTSD-like symptoms, but they seem underpowered to me to say anything meaningful about that subgroup.
However, my biggest concern is with their interpretation of their results. This is very technical, but rather than reporting statistical significance, they report effect sizes. This is actually a really good thing! For those not familiar with the stats, basically this means that instead of doing a statistical test where they would conclude something like "our data fail to reject the hypothesis that there's no effect, therefore we conclude there's no effect," which is fallacious (previously), instead they say "this is the amount of change we saw relative to the random variation in the population." Reporting effect sizes instead of p-values is a good thing.
But I disagree with their interpretation of their effect sizes. For example, in describing their results for the "rating of material" portion of their study, the authors write:
While the "rating of materials" had the largest magnitude plausible effect, the effect on subjects' unpleasant intrusive thoughts following exposure to the triggering material was similar in magnitude. Their other measures were much more modest.
The authors' interpretation of their own data is that it's incompatible with trigger warnings having anything greater than a "trivial" effect on (non-clinical) people's well-being. But that doesn't make sense to me. My interpretation is that their data is compatible with everything from a trivial effect to an effect that's slightly better than talk therapy is for treating depression, something that is unambiguously accepted as best clinical practice in psychology.
If the question is, then, "Do trigger warnings help people deal with trauma-evoking media?" then I think their data suggest the answer should be "Maybe, maybe not. It's unlikely that they make things worse, and it's also unlikely that they make things hugely better on average. It's plausible that they have an effect that's as good as talk therapy is for treating depression, but in a nonclinical population, which would be impressive. It's also plausible that there's a subset of individuals that derive much greater benefit. But it's also plausible that they don't have much effect at all. That's the best these data can say."
posted by biogeo at 9:06 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
However, my biggest concern is with their interpretation of their results. This is very technical, but rather than reporting statistical significance, they report effect sizes. This is actually a really good thing! For those not familiar with the stats, basically this means that instead of doing a statistical test where they would conclude something like "our data fail to reject the hypothesis that there's no effect, therefore we conclude there's no effect," which is fallacious (previously), instead they say "this is the amount of change we saw relative to the random variation in the population." Reporting effect sizes instead of p-values is a good thing.
But I disagree with their interpretation of their effect sizes. For example, in describing their results for the "rating of material" portion of their study, the authors write:
Notice that the CI around this difference establishes a narrow range of plausible values for the true size of the effect, all of which are trivial.(My emphasis.) But their reported results are an effect size (Hedge's g for the nerds out there) point estimate of -0.14, with a 95% confidence interval of [-0.26, -0.03]. Okay, but what does that mean? Well, the effect size for psychotherapy in treating depression is estimated at about 0.22 (when considering only high-quality studies). So the range of plausible values for the true size of the effect of trigger warnings includes an effect that is just as great as that of talk therapy for treating depression. It also includes a nearly negligible effect.
While the "rating of materials" had the largest magnitude plausible effect, the effect on subjects' unpleasant intrusive thoughts following exposure to the triggering material was similar in magnitude. Their other measures were much more modest.
The authors' interpretation of their own data is that it's incompatible with trigger warnings having anything greater than a "trivial" effect on (non-clinical) people's well-being. But that doesn't make sense to me. My interpretation is that their data is compatible with everything from a trivial effect to an effect that's slightly better than talk therapy is for treating depression, something that is unambiguously accepted as best clinical practice in psychology.
If the question is, then, "Do trigger warnings help people deal with trauma-evoking media?" then I think their data suggest the answer should be "Maybe, maybe not. It's unlikely that they make things worse, and it's also unlikely that they make things hugely better on average. It's plausible that they have an effect that's as good as talk therapy is for treating depression, but in a nonclinical population, which would be impressive. It's also plausible that there's a subset of individuals that derive much greater benefit. But it's also plausible that they don't have much effect at all. That's the best these data can say."
posted by biogeo at 9:06 PM on March 26, 2019 [18 favorites]
I don't think I ever have a need to read detailed descriptions of sexual assault. That's not something that I feel like is important for me to do. I already know it's painful and horrific, and that's generally the point of reading such content (if that's not the point then I would question the use of that content). If I had a friend who needed to talk about something? Sure. But most of the content is not survivors sharing their stories but the way our culture harnesses different forms of violence for ratings, sensationalism, shock value, or to pretend the content has "depth" or "edginess" while simultaneously desensitizing everyone to understanding the actual horror of those experiences.
I think this idea that a healthy survivor of trauma needs to be reading through detailed sexual assaults in graphic form as proof they are "healthy enough" without having any kind of reaction is not actually what I've learned form psychology classes or working with professionals on trauma.
But then again if that was a goal a therapist lined out for me, I would stop working with them, so there's that. I think in general listening to others pain is good, and for those who don't understand being willing to hear the pain is important. If you already know the pain I think being forced to be inundated with it under the guise of some kind of "desensitize therapy" is not a thing real therapists do to people but a misinterpretation of what working with lessening triggers would look like. Exposure therapy after rape is not something that typically includes listening to stories of rape over and over again. That should be upsetting for ANYONE let alone someone who's already gone through it.
A healthy way to lessen triggers that don't serve you would be for example, for me to be able to hear Nirvana's rape me, a song a guy played the night he raped me, without feeling like I'm thrown back there. Or to not feel like my entire body shuts down if a man stays within a foot of me. These are things it's healthy to work with. The triggers they are talking about are everyday things that are limiting your life, they're not talking about having a reaction to hearing about rape content itself which it's fine to be upset about. However I still don't have to like listening to Nirvana's rape me, and I don't have to allow men in my personal space if I'm not feeling it. I also don't need to go through the day reading details of rape content to prove I'm healed enough. I get it, it sucks. If someone wants to know if I believe them, I believe them. I don't think anyone should feel fine about seeing real violence in the world and the idea that it's healthy to see your fellow humans injured or read descriptions of it and be fine is like, everything that's wrong with the world to me. Exposure therapy more often includes getting to talk about ones OWN experience of sexual assault or traumatic experience in a supportive environment where you can receive care and not go through that alone. Exposure therapy is NOT sitting a trauma survivor down and gradually blasting them with more and more rape content until they stop reacting to rape content. If there are therapists doing that to people I would seriously question where they got their training. Avoiding listening to details of rape content on a daily or hourly basis is perfectly reasonable not only for a trauma survivor but for anyone really. If I am reading something and someone shares something of their personal experience because it's meaningful to the discussion, I don't actually care about content warning. I think in Frowner's discussion, that is where I value them more, for people who generally don't have a lot of reaction to the level of pain who want to talk about these things often without even the heart to acknowledge how much pain is involved, or people who are just "reporting the news" for the sake of it, I don't need to be inundated with that content.
If it's an actual survivor story, I will often skim read it and focus on the emotional sharing rather than the details. In survivor forums, some of them were good about asking people to put content warnings on detailed or graphic descriptions of the assault so that people in various states of healing could decide how much of that content they can deal with. There has also been evidence that some forms of assault healing that include a whole lot of listening to other survivors traumas in groups settings actually serves to retraumatize survivors and that has ceased to be the model they use for group healing (ie. the whole group goes around in a circle sharing more and more details of trauma for all the already hurting people to grapple with). In that sense, we need more people who are not trauma survivors, or actively hurting from such experiences to be willing to listen and offer support.
posted by xarnop at 6:27 AM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
I think this idea that a healthy survivor of trauma needs to be reading through detailed sexual assaults in graphic form as proof they are "healthy enough" without having any kind of reaction is not actually what I've learned form psychology classes or working with professionals on trauma.
But then again if that was a goal a therapist lined out for me, I would stop working with them, so there's that. I think in general listening to others pain is good, and for those who don't understand being willing to hear the pain is important. If you already know the pain I think being forced to be inundated with it under the guise of some kind of "desensitize therapy" is not a thing real therapists do to people but a misinterpretation of what working with lessening triggers would look like. Exposure therapy after rape is not something that typically includes listening to stories of rape over and over again. That should be upsetting for ANYONE let alone someone who's already gone through it.
A healthy way to lessen triggers that don't serve you would be for example, for me to be able to hear Nirvana's rape me, a song a guy played the night he raped me, without feeling like I'm thrown back there. Or to not feel like my entire body shuts down if a man stays within a foot of me. These are things it's healthy to work with. The triggers they are talking about are everyday things that are limiting your life, they're not talking about having a reaction to hearing about rape content itself which it's fine to be upset about. However I still don't have to like listening to Nirvana's rape me, and I don't have to allow men in my personal space if I'm not feeling it. I also don't need to go through the day reading details of rape content to prove I'm healed enough. I get it, it sucks. If someone wants to know if I believe them, I believe them. I don't think anyone should feel fine about seeing real violence in the world and the idea that it's healthy to see your fellow humans injured or read descriptions of it and be fine is like, everything that's wrong with the world to me. Exposure therapy more often includes getting to talk about ones OWN experience of sexual assault or traumatic experience in a supportive environment where you can receive care and not go through that alone. Exposure therapy is NOT sitting a trauma survivor down and gradually blasting them with more and more rape content until they stop reacting to rape content. If there are therapists doing that to people I would seriously question where they got their training. Avoiding listening to details of rape content on a daily or hourly basis is perfectly reasonable not only for a trauma survivor but for anyone really. If I am reading something and someone shares something of their personal experience because it's meaningful to the discussion, I don't actually care about content warning. I think in Frowner's discussion, that is where I value them more, for people who generally don't have a lot of reaction to the level of pain who want to talk about these things often without even the heart to acknowledge how much pain is involved, or people who are just "reporting the news" for the sake of it, I don't need to be inundated with that content.
If it's an actual survivor story, I will often skim read it and focus on the emotional sharing rather than the details. In survivor forums, some of them were good about asking people to put content warnings on detailed or graphic descriptions of the assault so that people in various states of healing could decide how much of that content they can deal with. There has also been evidence that some forms of assault healing that include a whole lot of listening to other survivors traumas in groups settings actually serves to retraumatize survivors and that has ceased to be the model they use for group healing (ie. the whole group goes around in a circle sharing more and more details of trauma for all the already hurting people to grapple with). In that sense, we need more people who are not trauma survivors, or actively hurting from such experiences to be willing to listen and offer support.
posted by xarnop at 6:27 AM on March 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
I like my wheelchair ramp analogy because there are a few people who just couldn't make it into the building without a ramp. They'd just stay home. A few more who could make it up the stairs, but they'd be exerting an unfairly disproportionate amount of effort and energy every day just to participate (while others just casually walk in). And then a whole lot of people who don't need a ramp, but it makes their lives a little easier and more pleasant every day -- even if it's just knowing they don't have to worry about whether the stairs will seem like too much today. And other people just enjoy having the choice.
And you're always welcome to take the stairs. There is no shortage of opportunities to expose yourself to the possibility of being surprised by graphic depictions of violence or other unpleasant things. Walk into an R rated movie without watching previews. Pick up a book. There's absolutely no reason those surprises should be a required part of taking an English or History or Sociology class.
I don't think you need a research study to see that trigger warnings have both broad and deep benefits to a college campus. And they're far less expensive than wheelchair ramps.
posted by straight at 9:40 AM on March 27, 2019 [10 favorites]
And you're always welcome to take the stairs. There is no shortage of opportunities to expose yourself to the possibility of being surprised by graphic depictions of violence or other unpleasant things. Walk into an R rated movie without watching previews. Pick up a book. There's absolutely no reason those surprises should be a required part of taking an English or History or Sociology class.
I don't think you need a research study to see that trigger warnings have both broad and deep benefits to a college campus. And they're far less expensive than wheelchair ramps.
posted by straight at 9:40 AM on March 27, 2019 [10 favorites]
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"Car seatbelts do not work. It's worth noting that the study did not include car crashes. It's possible that these devices could be helpful to the subset of the population that experiences car crashes."
posted by entropone at 8:37 AM on March 26, 2019 [253 favorites]