{"id":762261,"date":"2021-09-16T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T15:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=762261"},"modified":"2021-09-16T11:44:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-16T15:44:11","slug":"trigger-warnings-dont-work-cause-people-to-avoid-underlying-content-studies-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trigger-warnings-dont-work-cause-people-to-avoid-underlying-content-studies-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Trigger Warnings Don\u2019t Work, Cause People To Avoid Underlying Content, Studies Show"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftrigger-warnings-dont-work-cause-people-to-avoid-underlying-content-studies-show%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=762261&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/GettyImages-481945981.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Trigger warnings have been around for decades, but exploded on college campuses more recently as more students claimed to have suffered various traumas in their lives.<\/p>\n<p>In 2015, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt wrote their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2015\/09\/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind\/399356\/\">seminal work<\/a> on trigger warnings for The Atlantic, arguing that trigger warnings help people avoid their fears, which prevents them from moving on and getting better. The two academics explained that if someone who has a terrifying experience in an elevator and develops a fear of elevators is not warned to stay away from them for the rest of their life. Instead, they are gradually reintroduced to elevators until they are no longer afraid.<\/p>\n<p>Trigger warnings were initially intended <em>not<\/em> to be about avoiding content, but preparing those with trauma to engage in it. As we all know, this was never the case, as the warnings gave students at colleges and universities an excuse to avoid numerous works \u2013 including classics like Shakespeare and \u201cThe Odyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally, a study would come out showing that trigger warnings were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/new-study-says-trigger-warnings-are-totally-emily-zanotti\">useless<\/a> or even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/study-trigger-warnings-are-harmful-college-ashe-schow\">harmful<\/a> to students, yet they persisted with academics insisting they were necessary to combat the growing mental health crisis among young adults.<\/p>\n<p>Now, however, a review of <em>17<\/em> studies relating to trigger warnings shows that they are, indeed, harmful. The Chronicle of Higher Education <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chronicle.com\/article\/the-data-is-in-trigger-warnings-dont-work?cid=gen_sign_in\">looked<\/a> at the peer-reviewed studies and found that trigger warnings made things <em>worse<\/em> for individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe consensus, based on 17 studies using a range of media, including literature passages, photographs, and film clips: Trigger warnings do not alleviate emotional distress. They do not significantly reduce negative affect or minimize intrusive thoughts, two hallmarks of PTSD. Notably, these findings hold for individuals with and without a history of trauma,\u201d the Chronicle reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not aware of a single experimental study that has found significant benefits of using trigger warnings. Looking specifically at trauma survivors, including those with a diagnosis of PTSD, the Jones et al. study found that trigger warnings \u2018were not helpful even when they warned about content that closely matched survivors\u2019 traumas,\u2019\u201d the outlet added. \u201cWhat\u2019s more, they found that trigger warnings actually increased the anxiety of individuals with the most severe PTSD, prompting them to \u2018view trauma as more central to their life narrative.\u2019 \u2018Trigger warnings,\u2019 they concluded, \u2018may be most harmful to the very individuals they were designed to protect.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The evidence that professors are harming students with trigger warnings has not caught on. As the Chronicle reported, Michael Bugeja, who teaches journalism at Iowa State University, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/views\/2021\/08\/25\/why-trigger-warnings-are-needed-now-much-more-ever-opinion\">wrote<\/a> at Inside Higher Ed about his use of trigger warnings. Bugeja wrote in his article that more professors should use more trigger warnings and include this note on their syllabi:<\/p>\n<blockquote readability=\"5\">\n<p><em>You don\u2019t have to attend class if the content elicits an uncomfortable emotional response.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Bugeja includes numerous trigger warnings on his syllabus, and they\u2019re not just about things related to actual PTSD. Anything that might cause \u201cdifficult emotional responses\u201d in students is included, including words and phrases like COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and Trump.<\/p>\n<p>The Chronicle insisted that Bugeja\u2019s overuse of trigger warnings would likely \u201cimpede meaningful engagement with difficult topics and reinforce the idea that students are inherently fragile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trigger warnings have been around for decades, but exploded on college campuses more recently as more students claimed to have suffered various traumas in their lives.In 2015, Greg Lukianoff and &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-762261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}