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Background and objectives: Trigger warnings notify people of the distress that written, audiovisual, or other material may evoke, and were initially used to provide for the needs of those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since their inception, trigger warnings have become more widely applied throughout contemporary culture, sparking intense controversy in academia and beyond. Some argue that they empower vulnerable individuals by allowing them to psychologically prepare for or avoid disturbing content, whereas others argue that such warnings undermine resilience to stress and increase vulnerability to psychopathology while constraining academic freedom. The objective of our experiment was to investigate the psychological effects of issuing trigger warnings. Methods: We randomly assigned online participants to receive (n = 133) or not receive (n = 137) trigger warnings prior to reading literary passages that varied in potentially disturbing content. Results: Participants in the trigger warning group believed themselves and people in general to be more emotionally vulnerable if they were to experience trauma. Participants receiving warnings reported greater anxiety in response to reading potentially distressing passages, but only if they believed that words can cause harm. Warnings did not affect participants' implicit self-identification as vulnerable, or subsequent anxiety response to less distressing content. Limitations: The sample included only non-traumatized participants; the observed effects may differ for a traumatized population. Conclusions: Trigger warnings may inadvertently undermine some aspects of emotional resilience. Further research is needed on the generalizability of our findings, especially to collegiate populations and to those with trauma histories.
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... Trigger warnings, content warnings, or content notes are information about upcoming material that can be emotionally disturbing (Bellet et al., 2018). Originally, such warnings have been introduced to prevent people who suffer from traumatic experiences from reexperiencing aspects of the trauma (e.g., flashback memories) by being suddenly confronted with reminders of the traumatic events (Boysen et al., 2017). ...
... Originally, such warnings have been introduced to prevent people who suffer from traumatic experiences from reexperiencing aspects of the trauma (e.g., flashback memories) by being suddenly confronted with reminders of the traumatic events (Boysen et al., 2017). Over time however, the use of warnings expanded to prevent anyone, not just trauma survivors, from experiencing discomfort (Bellet et al., 2018). Trigger warnings thus have two main functions: First, allowing people to emotionally prepare for the material to reduce their negative emotional response, and second, allowing people to avoid the material altogether (Bridgland et al., 2023). ...
... We also used the Trigger Warnings Attitudes Assessment (Bellet et al., 2018). Participants are asked: "Do you think that trigger warnings should be used?" ...
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Trigger warnings aim to help people emotionally prepare for potentially disturbing material or avoid the material altogether. There has been a lively debate in society and academia whether the widespread use of trigger warnings helps, harms, or has no substantial impact. Recent meta-analytic evidence suggests trigger warnings have no effect on people’s emotional reaction, avoidance, and comprehension. They do however heighten a negative anticipatory reaction. We examined students’ attitudes toward trigger warnings in a non-English-speaking country – Germany, and whether their beliefs about the effects of trigger warnings on themselves and others match the meta-analytic evidence. Students held relatively positive attitudes toward trigger warnings and advocated their use. Their beliefs about the effects of trigger warnings however did not concur well with the actual effects. Our findings suggest that making students aware of the empirical evidence on trigger warnings would benefit discussions around trigger warnings.
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... Participants also completed the Words Can Harm (WCH) scale by Bellet et al. (2018). The WCH scale includes 10 statements and measures participants' belief that a person can experience marked psychological or emotional harm by the things they read or hear. ...
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Some of the most controversial information in psychology involves genetic or evolutionary explanations for sex differences in educational-vocational outcomes (Clark et al., 2024a). We investigated whether men and women react differently to controversial information about sex differences and whether their reaction depends on who provides the information. In the experiment, college students (n=396) and U.S. middle-aged adults (n=154) reviewed a handout, purportedly provided by either a male or a female professor. The handout stated that (1) women in STEM are no longer discriminated against in hiring and publishing and (2) sex differences in educational-vocational outcomes are better explained by evolved differences between men and women in various personal attributes. We found that college women were less receptive to the information than college men were and wanted to censor it more than men did; also, in both the college student and community adult samples, women were less receptive and more censorious when the messenger was a male professor than when the messenger was a female professor. In both samples, participants who leaned to the left politically and who held stronger belief that words can cause harm reacted with more censoriousness. Our findings imply that the identity of a person presenting controversial scientific information and the receiver’s pre-existing identity and beliefs have the potential to influence how that information will be received.
... In Study 1b, participants were asked to respond to materials summarizing a study about how trigger warnings do not effectively reduce anxiety preceding exposure to distressing content. These materials were based on a published scientific experiment (Bellet et al., 2018). In both studies, the measure of partisans' expectations was their prior efficacy beliefs (i.e., beliefs about the efficacy or inefficacy of the policy), and the measure of partisans' preferences was their prior support (i.e., support or opposition to the policy). ...
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... Programs that prevent student exposure to anxiety-eliciting and fear-eliciting events, for example, often increase anxiety over time, eroding instead of bolstering resilience (e.g., Jones et al., 2020;Limber & Kowalski, 2020;Travers, 2017;Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Competent behaviorists would likely have averted such outcomes by spotting reinforcement contingencies that amplify anxiety and reinforce self-narratives of vulnerability (Bellet et al., 2018. ...
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... Consider a graded approach to using warnings to enable professional development 'Slippery-slope' effects of warnings have been cautioned against, highlighting risks of warnings becoming applied excessively and the range of warned about content expanding unnecessarily. Aligned to concerns regarding warnings' association with infantilisation (Bellet et al. 2018) is failure to prepare learners for professional practice (Beverly et al. 2018;Nolan and Roberts 2021). Both learners (Nolan and Roberts 2022) and educators (Nolan and Roberts 2021) have deliberated over this practical challenge. ...
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