Trigger warnings: What are they, and why are they so controversial?

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

What's happening

Trigger warnings are mental-health-minded alerts that are issued ahead of something — such as a class discussion, theater production or social media video — that has a high risk of eliciting an upsetting emotional reaction and thereby possibly "triggering" a recurrence of past trauma. The practice, though widely adopted, isn't fully accepted. Case in point: In London, a theater has decided to warn audiences about themes of strong language, sexual references, grief and death in a new play, Frank and Percy, prompting star Ian McKellen to dismiss the trigger warnings as "ludicrous," noting, "I quite like to be surprised by loud noises and outrageous behavior on stage."

Over the summer, a British theater festival prompted ridicule in the press when it included a trigger warning for its production of Sound of Music, flagging themes of "music, family, romance, the threat of Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria," noting that some people may find "distressing." Last year, viewers of a streaming film, Luckiest Girl Alive, which includes a scene of sexual assault, spoke out about wishing it had come with trigger warnings.

Why there's debate

Writing for the New Republic in 2014, not long after Slate magazine had declared 2013 "The Year of the Trigger Warning," Jenny Jarvie helped bring news of their rise into public consciousness. She explained that while the alerts about potentially traumatizing material had initially been just an "irksome tic" on message boards and "feminist forums" during the early days of the internet, such warnings were now being seen everywhere from atop articles on major news sites to class syllabi at universities.

Jarvie pointed to a situation in which student leaders at the University of California, Santa Barbara, "passed a resolution urging officials to institute mandatory trigger warnings on class syllabi" and requiring professors who present "content that may trigger the onset of symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" to issue alerts and allow students to skip the classes.

That has since been followed by many similar proposals and policies at colleges across the country, targeting "triggering material" that could include racism, sexism, violence, suicide, sexual assault and more. By 2016, an NPR poll of 800 college and university instructors found that half used trigger warnings in their teaching.

But in some cases, the warnings have received pushback, such as at Cornell University, where administrators rejected a resolution in April that sought to mandate trigger warnings, noting such a move would “infringe on our core commitment to academic freedom and freedom of inquiry" and "have a chilling effect on faculty, who would naturally fear censure."

Many see trigger warnings as a slippery slope toward academic censorship — not only in school settings, but also in artistic expression.

"Not so long ago, a theatergoer was handed a program, shown to a seat and left to enjoy the show," noted a New York Times story on the rise of such warnings at the theater. "Then came notices about strobe lights and smoking. But now, following a trend bubbling up from college campuses, theaters across the country are offering increasingly comprehensive and specific trigger warnings."

It's all led to a flurry of criticism about the practice being "coddling."

Now added to the mix is some psychological research — the latest of which is an analysis, published online in Clinical Psychological Science in August and announced on Oct. 12, which found that such warnings may not help at all and instead appear to lead to increased anticipatory anxiety.

A series of studies on the topic, from between 2018 and 2021, had similar and consistent findings: that trigger warnings do not seem to help students, trauma survivors or those with PTSD diagnoses, and that in some cases, they made things worse by prompting anticipatory anxiety.

Thus comes another cause for worry: that the language of concern over trauma will, in turn, pathologize people's responses. In other words, writes Jill Filipovic in a new opinion piece for the Atlantic, "I Was Wrong About Trigger Warnings," "a person’s sense of themselves as either capable of persevering through hardship or unable to manage it can be self-fulfilling."

Perspectives

Trigger warnings are giving rise to hypersensitivity and paranoia

"What began as a way of moderating internet forums for the vulnerable and mentally ill now threatens to define public discussion both online and off. The trigger warning signals not only the growing precautionary approach to words and ideas in the university, but a wider cultural hypersensitivity to harm and a paranoia about giving offense." — Jenny Jarvie, New Republic

Such warnings allow students to psychologically prepare themselves

"The point is not to enable — let alone encourage — students to skip these readings or our subsequent class discussion … Rather, it is to allow those who are sensitive to these subjects to prepare themselves for reading about them, and better manage their reactions. The evidence suggests that at least some of the students in any given class of mine are likely to have suffered some sort of trauma, whether from sexual assault or another type of abuse or violence. So I think the benefits of trigger warnings can be significant." — Kate Mann, New York Times

They can be helpful — in moderation

"Trigger warnings serve to protect the autonomy of students with histories of trauma. It would be a mistake to abandon them because of a few errant examples of overreach. We have to affirm a culture of reading and discussing difficult works, with trigger warnings serving as a tool for this end, rather than an obstacle." — Harold H. Klapper, Harvard Crimson

Trigger warnings can negatively reinforce trauma as central to one's identity

"A large [Harvard] study … found that trigger warnings reinforced the belief on the part of trauma survivors that trauma was central (rather than incidental or peripheral) to their identity … The perverse consequence of trigger warnings, then, may be to harm the people they are intended to protect." — Jeannie Suk Gersen, New Yorker

Such warnings inhibit resilience

"To help people build resilience, we need to provide material aid to meet basic needs. We need to repair broken community ties so fewer among us feel like they’re struggling alone. And we need to encourage the cultivation of a sense of purpose beyond the self. We also know what stands in the way of resilience: avoiding difficult ideas and imperfect people, catastrophizing, isolating ourselves inside our own heads." — Jill Filipovic, The Atlantic