WARNING

Trigger Warnings Only ‘Trivially Helpful’ For Trauma Patients: Study

Two psychological studies show trigger warnings have little impact on people and may actually be counterproductive.

A pair of studies into the effectiveness of trigger warnings for people suffering from trauma agree that they are only “trivially helpful,” according to the New York Times. In one study, conducted by Mevagh Sanson of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, subjects were either given a trigger warning or not before being exposed to short stories and videos with negative themes including child abuse, murder, car accidents and physical abuse. “Although people were distressed by the negative materials we showed them, they were no more or less distressed if they’d seen a trigger warning first.” A second study, published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology by researchers at Flinders University in Australia asked 1,600 subjects they recruited online to look at photos that could be positive, negative or neutral, according to the New York Times. “They similarly measured mood throughout the experiment and found that while trigger warnings provoked an immediate decrease in mood, they had little other effect.”