Students responses to differing trigger warnings: A replication and extension

Kimble, Matthew O.; Koide, Jennifer; Flack, William F.

doi:10.1080/07448481.2022.2098038

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…One might think that this anticipatory anxiety might lead to widespread avoidance of potentially triggering material, yet there is very little evidence that this is the case. Across a range of studies, participants who are warned do not appear to use that warning to avoid the material, and there is some evidence that it may produce further engagement (Bridgland & Takarangi 2022; Bruce & Roberts 2020; Kimble et al, 2021;Kimble et al, 2022). This is not to say that avoidance is nonexistent, as Kimble and colleagues (2021; 2022) have found that approximately 3-5% of students read an alternative passage rather than a potentially triggering passage, but these rates do not differ based on trauma histories.…”

Section: Do Content Warnings Work?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Trauma-Specific Reactions to Sexual Assault Content in College Students: Considerations for Content Warnings

Kimble,

Dahlstrom,

Furman

et al. 2023

Hu Arenas

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Much of the debate on content warnings has occurred with little empirical data to inform it. In the past ve years this has started to change and in this most recent study, 185 students completed trauma surveys and a PTSD checklist and then read a passage that detailed a non ction account of a sexual assault of a female undergraduate. Participants were sent a follow up assessment 2 weeks later. Similar to previous studies, the majority of participants (94%), including those with a sexual assault history, read the passage even when offered an alternate reading with no traumatic content. In addition, those with a sexual assault history did not report an increase in PTSD symptoms in the following 2 weeks. However, unlike the two previous studies, those with a sexual assault history reported more distress right before and just after the reading. They also reported being more emotional during the study. This discrepancy in the ndings is likely due to the use of a non-ctional account and the use of the more speci c Sexual Experiences Survey (SES-SFR: Koss et al., 2007) to operationalize sexual assault. This suggests that student emotional responses to potentially triggering material are likely to vary depending on the type of trauma and the nature of the content presented.

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Section: Do Content Warnings Work?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Trauma-Specific Reactions to Sexual Assault Content in College Students: Considerations for Content Warnings

Kimble,

Dahlstrom,

Furman

et al. 2023

Hu Arenas

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Three Reasons to Forego Trigger Warnings

Sanson

2023

Hu Arenas

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Trigger warnings—alerts advising people about the negative nature of the material to follow and possible adverse reactions to it—are now commonplace. But their use on campuses remains controversial. A growing body of work on the effects of trigger warnings, including the work by Kimble and colleagues (Human Arenas, 2023), suggests that students do not need trigger warnings and demonstrates at least three ways in which trigger warnings do not have their intended effects. First, people rarely use the warnings to avoid negative material. Second, people report the same degree of distress about negative material whether or not they received a warning. Third, the warnings by themselves can lead people to feel distressed. In other words, trigger warnings are not merely unhelpful; they are harmful in ways not intended. For these three reasons, college instructors should forego the use of trigger warnings.

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