The Research is In: Trigger Warnings are Useless

Trigger warnings are useless and may be counter productive so say two professors from Carleton College.  Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education (paywall), Professors Amna Khalid and Jeffrey Aaron Snyder discuss a review of 17 studies.  The result, trigger warnings do nothing and actually increase anxiety of those with PTSD. 

The consensus, based on 17 studies using a range of media, including literature passages, photographs, and film clips: Trigger warnings do not alleviate emotional distress. They do not significantly reduce negative affect or minimize intrusive thoughts, two hallmarks of PTSD. Notably, these findings hold for individuals with and without a history of trauma. (For a review of the relevant research, see the 2020 Clinical Psychological Science article “Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories” by Payton J. Jones, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally.)

We are not aware of a single experimental study that has found significant benefits of using trigger warnings. Looking specifically at trauma survivors, including those with a diagnosis of PTSD, the Jones et al. study found that trigger warnings “were not helpful even when they warned about content that closely matched survivors’ traumas.”

What’s more, they found that trigger warnings actually increased the anxiety of individuals with the most severe PTSD, prompting them to “view trauma as more central to their life narrative.” “Trigger warnings,” they concluded, “may be most harmful to the very individuals they were designed to protect.”

 A few weeks ago I was a participant in a webinar Harvard University. The speaker warned the audience before presenting a table of statistics.  Yes, statistics.  If students can't handle look at a table of numbers, yes numbers, America is lost.