Trigger warnings as an interpersonal emotion-regulation tool: Avoidance, attention, and affect depend on beliefs

Gainsburg, Izzy; Earl, Allison

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2018.08.006

Cited by 33 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Relatedly, Bruce (2017) found that trigger warnings produced greater physiological markers of anticipatory anxiety compared to PG-13 warnings or no warnings. Gainsburg and Earl (2018) found that trigger warnings increased negative anticipatory affect, but slightly decreased negative response affect. However, they found that participants who were given trigger warnings were more likely to avoid both film clips and essays, which may exacerbate anxiety in the long run (McNally, 2016).…”

Section: Helping or Harming? The Effect Of Trigger Warnings On Indivimentioning

confidence: 96%

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals with Trauma Histories

Jones

Bellet

McNally

2019

Preprint

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Objective: Trigger warnings alert trauma survivors about potentially disturbing forthcoming content. However, most empirical studies on trigger warnings indicate that they are either functionally inert or cause small adverse side effects. These evaluations have been limited to either trauma-naïve participants or mixed samples. Accordingly, we tested whether trigger warnings would be psychologically beneficial in the most relevant population: survivors of serious trauma. Method: Our experiment was a preregistered replication and extension of a previous one (Bellet, Jones, & McNally, 2018); 451 trauma survivors were randomly assigned to either receive or not receive trigger warnings prior to reading potentially distressing passages from world literature. They provided their emotional reactions to each passage; self-reported anxiety was the primary dependent variable. Results: We found no evidence that trigger warnings were helpful for trauma survivors, for those who self-reported a PTSD diagnosis, or for those who qualified for probable PTSD, even when survivors' trauma matched the passages’ content. We found substantial evidence that trigger warnings countertherapeutically reinforce survivors' view of their trauma as central to their identity. Regarding replication hypotheses, the evidence was either ambiguous or substantially favored the hypothesis that trigger warnings have no effect. Conclusions: Trigger warnings are not helpful for trauma survivors. It is less clear whether trigger warnings are explicitly harmful. However, such knowledge is unnecessary to adjudicate whether to use trigger warnings – because trigger warnings are consistently unhelpful, there is no evidence-based reason to use them.

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Section: Helping or Harming? The Effect Of Trigger Warnings On Indivimentioning

confidence: 96%

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals with Trauma Histories

Jones

Bellet

McNally

2019

Preprint

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“…Regardless of the considerable body of literature contraindicating the counsel of avoidance for trauma survivors, it remains unclear whether individuals provided with trigger warnings use them to avoid triggering content. Gainsburg and Earl (2018) found that participants were marginally more likely to avoid film clips with trigger warnings ( p = .06). In contrast, Kimble (2019) found that individuals very rarely avoided material because of trigger warnings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Relatedly, Bruce (2017) found that trigger warnings produced greater physiological markers of anticipatory anxiety compared with PG-13 warnings or no warnings. Gainsburg and Earl (2018) found that trigger warnings increased negative anticipatory affect but slightly decreased negative response affect. Articles evaluating the effect of trigger warnings on anxiety or negative affect are summarized in Table 1.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories

Jones

Bellet

McNally

2020

Clinical Psychological Science

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Trigger warnings alert trauma survivors about potentially disturbing forthcoming content. However, empirical studies on trigger warnings suggest that they are functionally inert or cause small adverse side effects. We conducted a preregistered replication and extension of a previous experiment. Trauma survivors ( N = 451) were randomly assigned to either receive or not to receive trigger warnings before reading passages from world literature. We found no evidence that trigger warnings were helpful for trauma survivors, for participants who self-reported a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, or for participants who qualified for probable PTSD, even when survivors’ trauma matched the passages’ content. We found substantial evidence that trigger warnings countertherapeutically reinforce survivors’ view of their trauma as central to their identity. Regarding replication hypotheses, the evidence was either ambiguous or substantially favored the hypothesis that trigger warnings have no effect. In summary, we found that trigger warnings are not helpful for trauma survivors.

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“…These studies show that content warnings can reduce harm by reducing stress in students with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses [122] and by reducing negative emotions produced by engaging material [123]. They can be useful if provided well in advance of discussions in an educational context [124] and can reduce negative emotions and signal supportive environments, which may promote engagement with otherwise distressing material in the long run [123]. They can however also increase avoidance, which may prevent people from learning to cope with distressing content [123].…”

Section: Support For Safe Interaction With the Neon Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They can be useful if provided well in advance of discussions in an educational context [124] and can reduce negative emotions and signal supportive environments, which may promote engagement with otherwise distressing material in the long run [123]. They can however also increase avoidance, which may prevent people from learning to cope with distressing content [123]. Only one RCT has been conducted examining the psychological effects of issuing content warnings [125].…”

Section: Support For Safe Interaction With the Neon Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of receiving recorded mental health recovery narratives on quality of life in people experiencing psychosis, people experiencing other mental health problems and for informal carers: Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) study protocol for three randomised controlled trials

Rennick-Egglestone

Elliott

Smuk

et al. 2020

Trials

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Background: Mental health recovery narratives have been defined as first-person lived experience accounts of recovery from mental health problems which refer to events or actions over a period of time and which include elements of adversity or struggle, and also self-defined strengths, successes or survival. They are readily available in invariant recorded form, including text, audio or video. Previous studies have provided evidence that receiving recorded recovery narratives can provide benefits to recipients. This protocol describes three pragmatic trials that will be conducted by the Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) study using the NEON Intervention, a web application that delivers recorded recovery narratives to its users. The aim of the NEON Trial is to understand whether receiving online recorded recovery narratives through the NEON Intervention benefits people with experience of psychosis. The aim of the NEON-O and NEON-C trials is to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a definitive trial on the use of the NEON Intervention with people experiencing nonpsychosis mental health problems and those who care for others experiencing mental health problems respectively.

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Trigger warnings as an interpersonal emotion-regulation tool: Avoidance, attention, and affect depend on beliefs

Cited by 33 publications

References 38 publications

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals with Trauma Histories

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals with Trauma Histories

Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories

Impact of receiving recorded mental health recovery narratives on quality of life in people experiencing psychosis, people experiencing other mental health problems and for informal carers: Narrative Experiences Online (NEON) study protocol for three randomised controlled trials

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