Are trigger warnings helpful or harmful?

Most of the flurry of studies that followed found that trigger warnings had no meaningful effect, but two of them found that individuals who received trigger warnings experienced more distress than those who did not. Yet another study suggested that trigger warnings may prolong the distress of negative memories.

What are trigger warnings and why are they important?

Trigger warnings ensure that people are not suddenly confronted with triggers that may render them unable to focus and severely affect their state of mind. They exist primarily to warn survivors of trauma of the potentially distressing nature of the content.

What is the deal with trigger warnings?

Originally intended to warn students about graphic descriptions of sexual assault that it was thought might trigger post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in some students, more recently trigger warnings have come to encompass materials touching on a wide range of potentially sensitive subjects, including race, sexual …

Why trigger warnings are beneficial perhaps even necessary?

The purpose of trigger warnings is not to cause students to avoid traumatic content, but to prepare them for it, and in extreme circumstances to provide alternate modes of learning.

What is the psychological impact of trigger warnings?

The researchers found no evidence that trigger warnings influenced emotional regulation. Positive emotions tended to decrease and negative emotions tended to increase after watching the video regardless of whether there was a trigger warning. Trigger warnings also did not affect test performance.

What kind of trigger warnings are there?

In recent years, people have started including trigger warnings for content dealing with a range of topics, including:

• homophobia or transphobia.
• rape and other forms of sexual violence.
• child abuse.
• violence.
• incest.
• animal abuse or death.
• racism.
• self-harm.

Are trigger warnings harmful?

A new study suggests that they are harmful, but it has major limitations. Trigger warnings led to no self-reported differences in anxiety between the two groups overall, but for participants who already held the belief that “words cause harm,” trigger warnings led to an increase in anxiety.

Should trigger warnings be used in the classroom?

In the classroom setting, for instance, students would likely not avoid required reading material. Instead, trigger warnings would simply allow them to mentally prepare for triggering content or give them the chance to choose when they want to be exposed to that content.

Are trigger warnings censorship?

The argument that trigger warnings are a form of censorship that prohibits academic freedom is also severely misguided. They do not act as a restriction on text or even an edit, they are simply an alert proceeding the text, therefore it is not censorship.

Do trigger warnings violate academic freedom?

Triggering texts can cause more than just discomfort, they can actually cause physical symptoms of distress, preventing people from being able to focus or contribute to a discussion, whether they want to or not. The argument that trigger warnings are a form of censorship that prohibits academic freedom is also severely misguided.