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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 wa

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. _______ TL;DR: the study focuses on nebulous "effects", whereas they should be looking at bounce rates.

vorpalhex 4y ago
The study was about content warnings and anxiety triggers.
- romwell 4y ago
  My comments were about the study, and how it fundamentally fails to achieve the state objective.
kulahan 4y ago
He explains this in the thread - it appears as though trigger warnings only serve to increase anxiety until the trigger is experienced, and at no point does it improve or worsen the experience. So he analogizes this by saying "Imagine a doctor prescribed you a pill and you asked if it was going to help". If "Oh no, it won't help, but it might cause some very minor harm." was the response, you'd probably find a new doctor. So why do we do the opposite here? In reality, you're "being an asshole" with the trigger warnings, assuming you continue doing them knowing now that it does not help, and may actively harm.
- igorbark 4y ago
  this analogy breaks down on a number of levels. 1. patients invented and self-prescribed the pill originally 2. the doctor has concluded that the pills are harmful by studying what happens who do not have the illness the pills are meant to treat take the pills 3. the doctor didn't really keep track of what doses were given to different patients i.e. 1. trigger warnings were not originally forced on people, they were created by people who found them helpful to help themselves 2. the studies in the meta analysis are all on general populations, in particular mechanical turk and college students 3. there is no discussion of the different effect different implementations of content warnings can have. for example, the only study that measured physiological responses instead of using self-reported anxiety showed the highest anxiety response. probably, because it also gave a completely general and non-specific content warning that went like this: "The next page has the link to the movie clip. Researchers have been asked to give a trigger warning for the clip". so they showed that when told some arbitrary but highly disturbing thing could happen at any point during a video, people in general will be more anxious when watching the video. and concluded that content warnings are a harmful practice.
  - romwell 4y ago
    Don't forget: 4. The doctor didn't keep track of of how many patients ditched him, forever, because the doc doesn't understand the above ----- Thank you for a thorough reply and debunking of the argument by broken analogy. The whole idea of content warnings is giving the audience a choice; it's about informed consent — a concept that both HN and the researcher seem to struggle with. No shit Sherlock that a content warning of the form "some thing you won't like will happen, BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHICH THING NOR WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN is anxiety inducing! For fuck's sake, that's a bad faith thing to say. How about: >"Warning: I'm going to talk about rape, about 15 minutes into the talk, for about 5 minutes. I'll give you a heads-up, so you don't have to worry. If you don't want to hear about rape today, you can skip this part and stay with us for the rest." This is a trigger warning. It enables informed consent to consume any/all parts of the content. Similarly, "what follows in 10 seconds is a depiction of rape" is a warning. A trigger "warning" without the option to opt out of consuming the content warned about isn't a "warning", it's a threat. And a "warning" that isn't specific about either content or time is torture. >"Somewhere in this talk, we'll show something that we know you asked us not to show you out of the blue. We'll still show it out of the blue, but we're warning you about it now. No, you can't leave" — apparently, we need a research article to tell HN that this is fucking bullshit. The cherry on the pie remains what I said in the first place: that the natural outcome of such "warning" (i.e. lack of warning) is that affected people won't choose to interact with you again — and that's exactly what this study doesn't measure.

vorpalhex 4y ago

The study was about content warnings and anxiety triggers.

romwell 4y ago
My comments were about the study, and how it fundamentally fails to achieve the state objective.

kulahan 4y ago

He explains this in the thread - it appears as though trigger warnings only serve to increase anxiety until the trigger is experienced, and at no point does it improve or worsen the experience. So he analogizes this by saying "Imagine a doctor prescribed you a pill and you asked if it was going to help". If "Oh no, it won't help, but it might cause some very minor harm." was the response, you'd probably find a new doctor. So why do we do the opposite here? In reality, you're "being an asshole" with the trigger warnings, assuming you continue doing them knowing now that it does not help, and may actively harm.

igorbark 4y ago
this analogy breaks down on a number of levels. 1. patients invented and self-prescribed the pill originally 2. the doctor has concluded that the pills are harmful by studying what happens who do not have the illness the pills are meant to treat take the pills 3. the doctor didn't really keep track of what doses were given to different patients i.e. 1. trigger warnings were not originally forced on people, they were created by people who found them helpful to help themselves 2. the studies in the meta analysis are all on general populations, in particular mechanical turk and college students 3. there is no discussion of the different effect different implementations of content warnings can have. for example, the only study that measured physiological responses instead of using self-reported anxiety showed the highest anxiety response. probably, because it also gave a completely general and non-specific content warning that went like this: "The next page has the link to the movie clip. Researchers have been asked to give a trigger warning for the clip". so they showed that when told some arbitrary but highly disturbing thing could happen at any point during a video, people in general will be more anxious when watching the video. and concluded that content warnings are a harmful practice.
- romwell 4y ago
  Don't forget: 4. The doctor didn't keep track of of how many patients ditched him, forever, because the doc doesn't understand the above ----- Thank you for a thorough reply and debunking of the argument by broken analogy. The whole idea of content warnings is giving the audience a choice; it's about informed consent — a concept that both HN and the researcher seem to struggle with. No shit Sherlock that a content warning of the form "some thing you won't like will happen, BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHICH THING NOR WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN is anxiety inducing! For fuck's sake, that's a bad faith thing to say. How about: >"Warning: I'm going to talk about rape, about 15 minutes into the talk, for about 5 minutes. I'll give you a heads-up, so you don't have to worry. If you don't want to hear about rape today, you can skip this part and stay with us for the rest." This is a trigger warning. It enables informed consent to consume any/all parts of the content. Similarly, "what follows in 10 seconds is a depiction of rape" is a warning. A trigger "warning" without the option to opt out of consuming the content warned about isn't a "warning", it's a threat. And a "warning" that isn't specific about either content or time is torture. >"Somewhere in this talk, we'll show something that we know you asked us not to show you out of the blue. We'll still show it out of the blue, but we're warning you about it now. No, you can't leave" — apparently, we need a research article to tell HN that this is fucking bullshit. The cherry on the pie remains what I said in the first place: that the natural outcome of such "warning" (i.e. lack of warning) is that affected people won't choose to interact with you again — and that's exactly what this study doesn't measure.