Trigger warning: discussion of trigger warnings

July 14, 2019 9:13 AM

As if in response to the previous Metafilter discussion of recent research on trigger warnings, a new Harvard clinical psychology study this time examined participants who had experienced trauma: "Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals with Trauma Histories." As summarized in Slate,

The methods are the same as the 2018 paper, but with a pool of 451 participants who had experienced trauma... In this population, trigger warnings still failed to lessen the emotional distress from reading a passage. The authors also found evidence, they wrote, that trigger warnings “countertherapeutically reinforce survivors’ view of their trauma as central to their identity.”

posted by PhineasGage (4 comments total)

I'm sorry, but someone who titles a previous paper on the subject "Trigger Warning: Empirical Evidence Ahead" is someone who has an agenda. But the big red flag for me with the article is how the researchers avoided the elephant in the room - informed consent (which is what a trigger warning fundamentally is) has been a key part of psychological research for decades, for reasons that I would imagine that those researchers would be able to easily elucidate. So, if their research is saying that trigger warnings are useless and bad, wouldn't that mean that informed consent is also the same? Or does that mean that they're missing the point of trigger warnings completely?
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:23 AM on July 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I freely admit I've seen some trigger warnings that strike me as ridiculous, but I thought the whole point of affixing trigger warnings was to help people decide whether they wanted to expose themselves to certain media, not to desensitize them to media they were going to be exposed to anyhow. In other words, isn't this study answering a question no one was asking?
posted by adamrice at 9:25 AM on July 14, 2019 [6 favorites]

This appears to be a "replication and extension" of their previous work, meaning the "trigger warning" read "TRIGGER WARNING: The passage you are about to read contains disturbing content and may trigger an anxiety response, especially in those who have a history of trauma.”

These colossal fucking jackasses might as well have labeled food "ALLERGY WARNING: This food contains ingredients that may cause anaphylaxis or inflammatory responses, particularly in people who have a history of allergic reactions" fed it to people with allergies, and then expressed confidence that no allergen or ingredient labels have value.
posted by bagel at 9:27 AM on July 14, 2019 [4 favorites]

I'd still rather see them and judge for myself if I should keep reading or keep scrolling.

Further, it says right there in the pullquote that participants would read the passage after the CW anyway. Well then no shit it's going to cause anxiety?

Getting a heads up on certain content has saved me a lot of heartache by having that warning and being able to skip it. Like if someone tells me a movie has violence against children, and I watch it anyway, quelle surprise, being warned didn't help. If I skip the movie entirely, though, I've saved myself the grief of enduring a subject that re-opens trauma for me.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 9:28 AM on July 14, 2019