content warnings were originally and imo ongoingly most importantly an accessibility issue. afaict, all but maybe one of the studies don't delineate between members of the population this accessibility aid is supposed to help and gen pop
language politics of whether trauma is a "disability" aside, the existence of a meta-analysis over studies which purport to study whether a disability aid works by using it with people who do not have that disability is saddening
some other limitations the i don't see the authors comment on (though i haven't read thoroughly so happy to be corrected): - the effect of different kinds of content warnings isn't discussed (some interesting dimensions are specificity and prominence) - the fact that almost all of the studies use self-reported anxiety scales, and thus it is unclear whether content warnings increase anticipatory anxiety or increase self-reported anticipatory anxiety
like with most accessibility aids the interesting questions are not "does it help". they're "who do different forms of the aid help or harm" and "morally, when should we expect or even enforce a particular level of implementation"
looking at how other accessibility aids work is helpful for answering some of these questions. to take the classic university classroom example, you could for example look at the way some departments handle students who aren't able to take lecture notes. a student can request note taking accommodation for a particular class, and then a peer volunteer (or as a fallback university employee) will take notes for that student. just like that, we don't need to have a national debate about whether it is helpful or harmful if all university professors are forced to provide note taking services for all of their students.
anyway, i guess i'm upset because i'm tired of the ongoing massive debate and apparently research industry that completely misses the point.
I struggle with trigger/content warnings as someone with PTSD stemming from severe childhood neglect/abuse (e.g. I was allowed to just rot in the basement for a week with a fever of 104+ as a child).
The reason is because there seems to be a standardized list of 'real' triggers that people agree on, and I'm often triggered by depictions of loving families. Which nobody is ever going to warn for. I also have major disassociation and emotional blunting, so I have no idea what makes violence or sexual related cross the line into needing a warning. So ironically, spaces that insist heavily on trigger warnings are hard for me to exist in as a person with PTSD without breaking the norms. It's hard not to feel there are 'right' and 'wrong' triggers.
They seemingly didn’t study the thing that people actually want the answer to.
Given a person who is triggered by a specific type of content do they avoid things labeled with that specific type of content more than if it was unlabeled? It’s one of those things that seems so obviously true when you talk to people.
To me this study is actually huge to support trigger warnings and content labels. They don’t cause people across a population overall to avoid the content, they act as a positive signal for people who are looking for it (like R rating on horror movies), and they have no effect on the experience — it makes the response no worse and doesn’t spoil it for people who want it.
Twitter thread about the work by the author: https://twitter.com/paytonjjones/status/1563950340944560128
So the reasons people are for this stuff are pretty uniformly incorrect and the reasons people are against this stuff are either also incorrect or possibly correct depending on the situation?
What about stuff like movie and game ratings? What about things like restricting sexually explicit material to minors? Seems like a weird point to make. What I like about content warnings is that I can choose whether I want to engage with something that might upset me in a more granular fashion than “entire profile.” It’s not like I’d stop avoiding content if there were no CWs anywhere.
(TW: Suicide)
I'd like to share a personal annecdote that I think may be instructive to people who have never found trigger warnings to be useful.
Once a friend of mine wanted to show me a visual novel. They skipped the trigger warning at the beginning because they felt it was spoilery. We played through the whole thing in one night; about halfway through the story (given the path I took), we were lead to believe a character committed suicide (and that it may be because you rejected them romantically), and then at the end it's revealed they were literally trolling you.
I had fairly recently gotten out of a traumatic relationship with someone suicidal. When I would try to leave the relationship, they would threaten to kill themselves. Sometimes they would beg me to kill them. Needless to say, suicide was a difficult topic for me to engage with in an immersive, RPG-like setting.
I felt blindsided & stopped having a good time after I was lead to believe the character took their life. I was uncomfortable but didn't know what to do but keep playing. When I finished the game and the twist was revealed, I didn't feel pathos. I think some of you may relate to the moment you realized the show Lost was never going to resolve the mysteries it was putting forth, that the show runners were throwing things out to grab your attention with no plan to resolve them; like my emotions had been manipulated in a cheap way to engage me. I felt toyed with.
I think if I had had the trigger warnings, I would've been able to mentally prepare myself. Or I'd have the opportunity to decide I didn't want to play.
I want to make informed choices about the media I consume and how I consume it. Make of that what you will.
(This was all many years ago & I'm doing well.)
This comes right after the release of our game Flat Eye [0], which includes a quite new Content Warning system.
So far players really likes the fact that the system exists and that they can choose to skip or see the content. It's all about being warned anf having the choice.
So it is mostly a shared superstition. “Grugg see four rocks like a paw, Grugg must say doo-doo for good tiger hunt”, except we shouldn't consider ourselves to be much different from Grugg. Of course, it's not the only example of modern day religious practices (cough… cough… masks)…
This study seems to be pretty limited regardless of how it's carried out.
People seem to be hung up on the new term "trigger warning" when we've had content warnings since time immemorial.
Nobody seems to be writing the articles on "efficacy" of movie ratings, or putting "18+" labels on content. We, as a society, understand that not all content is suitable for all audiences... when it comes to sex, and sex only, it seems.
Then there's the issue of trust. Any source that gives a heads-up of what's coming and doesn't spring 2girls1cup on you without a warning is going to be more trusted than the one that does.
Why is that even a question when the same principles applies to content other than an unclothed female nipple or (gasp) genitals? Is it so hard to make the leap to other subjects, such as vivid depictions of rape and violence?
Why isn't it common sense that, regardless of studies of "efficacy", giving a heads-up about shit that some people in the audience might not want to see unprompted is, like, polite, and is universally a good thing?
It's frankly exhausting to even have these discussions, again and again. Trigger warnings are about not being an asshole to the people who choose to listen to you.
The effect is they might choose to listen to you again, because you're not a dick. End of story.
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TL;DR: the study focuses on nebulous "effects", whereas they should be looking at bounce rates.
“To many conservatives, trigger warnings are a symptom of a world gone mad: a fragilizing ritual meant to insulate the delicate worldview of a weak-minded generation.”
Conservatives routinely get upset about the presence of gay people in media, among many other things. Is that somehow in a different category?
(This is in reply to the article linked by the author of the study in that Twitter thread)
What the heck is this?
The presumption of this article is that trigger warnings get you emotionally ready for an adverse subject, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they are for.
I figure most people often want warnings on their books/videos/etc "e.g. this is a live-leak of somebody dying" so they can avoid the material.
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Per his twitter "Well, too bad for all y'all. Trigger warnings do not seem to encourage avoidance." ... Sounds kinda us-vs-them.
I'm 100% sure I do not click on videos on reddit that indicate they are videos of somebody dying. No amount of statistical papers will change that. I highly doubt I'm the only one.
I grew up in a religious fundamentalist household that tried to shelter me from every "bad" thing in the world. I wasn't allowed to watch many cartoons because they were "too violent. It's probably for that reason that few things fill me with more disgust and rage than trigger warnings and censorship. Thank God for the Internet coming along to enable me to see every form of violence, abuse, pornography, torture, death, suicide advocacy, and bomb making material in the world. I am eternally grateful to be the worldly person I am to day and horrified to see trigger warnings appearing in most of the executive communications at my workplace. I used to have crippling anxiety, PTSD, thought of suicide every day, and struggled with a large assortment of chronic mental health conditions that disable many people, so in theory I'm someone that should want this. Deliberately exposing myself to as much of the worst of the world as possible made me much happier and stronger.
"Overall, we found that warnings have no effect on affective responses to negative material nor on educational outcomes (i.e., comprehension). However, warnings reliably increase anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material, or that they increase engagement with negative material under specific circumstances. Limitations and implications for policy and therapeutic practice are discussed."
The characteristics of the meta analysis were largely focused on the general public and attempts to limit anxiety in that domain. But I think they forgot an entire other application: NSFL warnings.
Whenever I see NSFL I ABSOLUTELY avoid clicking, I even stop reading, and that has greatly improved my peace of mind. Learned that the hard way during the early internet: I've accidentally seen way too many horrific things I wont even tangentially mention to last me 1000 liftimes. Sure there is an anticipatory impact, but NSFL works for me!
It seems like one message here is that more moderation is needed if anticipation has similar impact as the actual content.