“The science is out: trigger warnings don’t work”
“The science is out: trigger warnings don’t work”
Psychologist goes through a meta-analysis that’s been done about the efficacy of trigger warnings. Seems like they have a bit of an axe to grind about their… horror writing career(?) but thought it was interesting. Thoughts?
The studies i've seen so far on this had one thing in common: They do not get the actual use of trigger warnings. Either they just put the warning there, but participants have to view the stuff anyway, which ofc means the warning does absolutely nothing, or participants voluntarily view it, which also says little about the use of the warning. Trigger warnings are about giving people the option to avoid certain topics. Many people who use them may or may not do so on a case by case basis, like assumed severity of the material, general mood in that moment, a calculation of their need to stay informed vs. how recent and severe their latest trauma has been and so on. In a study situation (where they will usually not know that the study researches use of trigger warnings, were they will usually not expect particularly gruesome material, and were they may feel that they should be thorough to be a useful participant), it's reasonable to assume that people will be much more likely to view CWed material.
Seems like it would be way more useful and accurate to just have a bunch of participants interact with a blog or something as a "focus group" and have trigger warnings that let them skip an article if they want to. Ask them to view a certain number and explain skipping is fine. Then after, ask some questions about their triggers and see what lines up. Did people who report certain triggers skip those articles? Seems like an easy way to set this study up and actually test if trigger warnings are useful. Would be even better if you could include people in the study who have documented triggers, but that's a lot harder to manage
"trigger warnings don't work" is a blatantly impossible statement, their purpose is to prevent people from being exposed to further content that triggers trauma or other mental health issues, the only way they wouldn't work is if people were copy pasting the entire contents of what they're doing a warning about into the warning itself
Yeah that’s how I understood the studies, they force you to ignore the warning
Apparently the study counted people dropping out of the study as choosing not to view the content, and used the what would obviously be low amount of dropouts as "proof" that it doesn't prevent people from viewing it
The study seems to imply that the trigger warning itself is triggering
Which is false if you've ever had a serious trigger, it's specifics that get you
This shit sucks. It's railroading the intended use of content warnings into something impossible, and then dismissing that people can or do use them in any other way. It assumes the purpose of avoiding triggers is to be therapeutic treatment for those triggers, and then calls content warnings pointless when they can't deliver that on their own. It's ignoring the use of content warnings to lessen the harmful impact of triggers, or their use together with other therapeutic treatment.
She cites studies comparing the reaction to triggering content with or without a warning and says it isn't helpful, but what about when they actually serve their purpose? When people choose not to view content based on the warnings? She says she doesn't do that, and then dismisses that anyone ever would. I do that all the time. I'm pretty sure other people on this site do as well. That's not her experience, and it doesn't support her point, so she doesn't care. The study she cites on avoidance seems to be treating the total number of eyes on a graphic image as a measure of the effectiveness of warnings, and assuming the images would be equally distressing to all people. From what she presented, it doesn't consider that the people can have vastly different reactions to the content, and the ones who opted out of seeing the images could be extremely affected by them, while the ones who opted in may be unaffected.
She assumes that the goal of content warnings is to avoid 100% of exposure to triggering content, which is obviously impossible and she uses that makes them sound ridiculous and naive. Then she assumes that warnings will be successful in blocking out 100% of content, and is concerned that people won't be able to get better at responding to their triggers without exposure, ignoring that people can be selective about when it would be helpful to engage with triggering content.
Her viewpoint sounds nice when she frames it as "the importance of radical acceptance". When that becomes "in real life, staying away from triggering things is only going to make you very fragile" and then she spends much of the video talking about virtue signaling and cancel culture, it's clear this is just the classic conservative "toughen up, snowflake" driving a misrepresentation of content warnings.
Edit: This video is basically equivalent to claiming that labeling foods that contain peanuts doesn't work because
- Warnings don't make allergic reactions less severe
- Warnings have never cured anyone's allergies
- Chocolate bar sales have not been hurt by peanut warnings
The specific ads at 1:40 makes me lose trust in whatever this person has to say, just more grindset bullshit
EDIT: The way I understand the studies, they still force people to encounter the triggering material, where the purpose of the warning is to give you an option to avoid it.
Ya but it’s not like she did the meta analysis, she’s just regurgitating it. I don’t know this person, was just served it by the algo
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: