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In 2017, Monash University rolled out a controversial new pilot program. Warnings would be placed on 15 of the university’s courses letting students know the content – about sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, suicide and animal cruelty – was potentially emotionally distressing.
The trigger warning pilot came after years of campaigning by the university’s student association, the ABC reported. “This will allow students who do have a response, whether that be an anxiety attack or a panic attack based on any previous traumatic experiences, to be able to prepare themselves,” the association’s president Matilda Grey said.
The ABC story went on to canvas the arguments that have been levelled against trigger warnings: that they shelter people from the harsh realities of life, stop them engaging with challenging material and deny free speech.
Scientific research has found trigger warnings are ineffective.
The culture war that has raged over trigger warnings has been as vicious as it has been evidence-free. But the research that is starting to emerge renders the debate largely moot – because here’s what it says: trigger warnings don’t have any effect on a person’s response to content.
“They don’t seem to do anything,” says Flinders University’s Associate Professor Melanie Takarangi, who has published several studies on trigger warnings. “There is really no meaningful difference to how people react to something whether they received a trigger warning or not.”
Trigger warnings originated in the late 1990s on internet message boards; they were first applied to content that graphically depicted rape. Those posting the warnings were worried reading such content might trigger panic attacks or, in people with post-traumatic stress disorder, intrusive memories.
The concept soon expanded and hit the mainstream in the mid-2010s. Students at several American college campuses called on their administrations to add official trigger warnings to potentially harmful material.
Writing in the university’s newspaper, students at Columbia University detailed a friend’s experience: “During the week spent on Ovid’s ”Metamorphoses”, the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts of rape throughout the work. However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text.”
Trigger warnings are everywhere, but do they work?
Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. Below is an excerpt – sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox.
In 2017, Monash University rolled out a controversial new pilot program. Warnings would be placed on 15 of the university’s courses letting students know the content – about sexual assault, domestic and child abuse, suicide and animal cruelty – was potentially emotionally distressing.
The trigger warning pilot came after years of campaigning by the university’s student association, the ABC reported. “This will allow students who do have a response, whether that be an........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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