In recent years, sensitivity towards all types of topics has skyrocketed. Whether in matters of sex, race, gender, sexual orientation or any other nature, there are topics that the public prefers to be treated delicately, or not to be talked about directly.
In the last decade, “trigger warnings” have become very popular, a type of message or warning that is given before discussing an issue that may offend sensitivities. Although its purpose is to prevent victims of injustice from reliving a past experience, there are also those who are critical of this type of notice.
Next We will see if the trigger warnings work what criticisms have been made and how they relate to suffering from mental disorders.
Do trigger warnings work when it comes to protecting people?
In recent years, “trigger warnings” or sensitive content notices in all types of content, both academic and entertainment These warnings are given before explaining a topic or presenting an event that may offend sensitivities, given that they may represent some type of violent action against a disadvantaged group, minority, sexual orientation, gender, race or social class.
In principle, the objective of these notices is to prevent people who have been victims of some injustice and who happens to be represented in the topic to be discussed, from remembering their traumatic experience and suffering again. The intention, in itself, is empathetic, wanting anyone exposed to that content not to relive something that hurt them and have the right to decide not to be exposed to such material.
However, it has been suggested that these types of ads can actually do more harm than good, hypersensitizing those who were real victims and spreading that fear to people who have never received real aggression or harm.
Furthermore, more and more people are seeing these types of ads. a way of excessively softening reality, endangering freedom in education and artistic expression Making up or, directly, censoring unpleasant but real content is harmful to society as a whole.
Censorship at the university
Trigger warnings have become very common in North American universities especially in careers with social themes such as sociology, psychology, philosophy and other disciplines in this field.
Given the greater sensitivity and awareness of society towards groups that have been subjected to oppression, whether due to race, sex, gender, sexual orientation or culture, more and more people are asking that the contents taught in higher education come with a prior message warning that they may be offensive to some students.
For example, if a university is teaching the subject of forensic psychology, it is quite likely that at some point sexual abuse will be discussed. In the content of the subject, real testimonies of raped women or children victims of pedophilia can be explained. The trigger warning would be placed before starting the syllabus, with the intention that if there is someone in the classroom who has been a victim of these crimes, they can mentally prepare for that agenda or, directly, have the option of not wanting to see it
To understand it better. Instead of talking about social sciences, let’s talk about a medical discipline such as surgery. Let’s imagine that we have a professor who is going to explain how to perform a heart operation but, before teaching the procedure, he shows the “trigger warning” that blood, viscera and sharp objects will be seen. So gives the option to those who are sensitive to these stimuli to leave class while the operation is taught For those who skip class, how will they learn to trade if they avoid this content?
The problem with this is that, although we must feel empathy and protect people who have been victims of some type of injustice or violation of their rights, we must also prepare university students as people to face a real world, in which injustices occur regardless of whether or not they have studied them in class.
That is to say, it is very uneducational to give students the option of not studying a certain content because it seems offensive to them. Furthermore, offense is something extremely subjective, which should not be considered a solid argument to censor knowledge and debate.
Can you confront racism without knowing what it is? Can you fight for gender equality without knowing the oppression of women? These topics are mandatory to study in order to carry out a true fight that improves the conditions of the entire population Not studying them prevents us from recognizing true injustice and fighting against it.
Content warnings work, but poorly
Trigger warnings have become truly controversial, especially in the field of clinical psychology. It has been suggested that far from protecting the mental health of victims of some injustice, it damages the mental health of people who, despite not having been victims, learn to have excessive fear of certain topics.
Fear and, consequently, phobias, have an important social component. These are aspects that can be acquired without having had a traumatic experience, simply by listening to someone talk about an event, exaggerate its severity, and warn everyone to avoid it. To understand it, if as children we were told that dogs bit and that we should be afraid of them, even if they never hurt us, we can end up having a real phobia of them. Sometimes words are what hurt us.
The same would happen with trigger warnings. Content that, perhaps, seen without prior notice does not have to be stressful, although it may be a little unpleasant, if we are notified that it may bother us, we may exaggerate its degree of offensiveness. We will have become aware that what we are going to see is something that we will not like and, consequently, offends us.
This issue has been attempted to be studied scientifically, taking the case of the experiment carried out by Benjamin Bellet, Payton Jones, and Richard McNally These researchers divided a sample of 270 American subjects into two groups, and each was assigned to read a series of ten passages from works of all time. Five of these passages did not contain potentially unpleasant material, while the other five did, such as a depiction of murder or rape.
One group was the control, in which before each passage They were not given any warning that what they were going to read was going to leave a bad taste in their mouths The other was the group exposed to “trigger warnings”, and before each passage they were presented with a warning like the following:
WARNING. The passage you are about to read contains disturbing material and may cause an anxiety response, especially in those who may have a history of trauma.
The degree of anxiety was measured before and after reading the ten passages In this way, the researchers had a baseline measure of how upset the participants were normally and how they were after reading the passages, both with and without a trigger warning. The researchers found that participants who had been warned reported that they or others might feel bothered by what they had read much more than those who had not been warned, even though they had read the same passages.
These findings, although it is true that more studies would be needed to delve deeper into this phenomenon, allow us to understand that the way in which the information to be received is treated influences how it is perceived. If we receive a warning that what they are going to tell us is going to offend us, it is quite likely that we will end up offending ourselves or we will see it in a less objective way than we would if they did not give us that warning.
Impact on mental health
It has been suggested that trigger warnings can have a negative impact on the health of the population , even in those people who have not been victims of any traumatic event. Receiving a warning about what you are going to see can be unpleasant and can awaken anticipatory anxiety, making the person suffer from something that they do not know for sure if it can really bother them. That is, without even having seen if the message is offensive, you can already feel offended.
The idea that words or images can trigger unpleasant memories of past trauma has been studied since World War I , when psychiatrists began treating soldiers who presented the symptoms of what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The concept of trigger warnings is largely based on this idea, since they are considered stimuli that can awaken flashbacks or unpleasant memories.
The discomfort of people who suffer from anxiety or trauma-related disorders, such as PTSD, is real. When an anxiety stimulus occurs, they manifest a series of really painful symptoms whose cause is directly linked to the traumatic experience and having seen an element that reminded them of that pain. They are mental disorders that require professional help. The problem is that the use of trigger warnings is precisely the antithesis of how therapies for anxiety disorders work
The therapy par excellence for this type of disorders is exposure therapy. The individual who manifests a high response to the stressful stimulus is progressively accustomed to it through exposure. For example, a person who suffers from arachnophobia, in order to overcome his phobia, will be presented with different situations in therapy so that he can get used to spiders.
At first you will be presented with pictures of spiders, then dolls of spiders, later you will be asked to approach a spider in a box and finally be able to touch one, all in several sessions. Thus, in exposure therapy the individual reduces his anxiety by getting used to the anxiety-producing stimulus. At first it will not be easy for him, and it may never stop seeming like an unpleasant stimulus, but he will be able to be closer to what previously generated a very high stressful response.
The problem with trigger warnings is that it does exactly what it is trying to prevent in exposure therapy : encourage avoidance behaviors. By giving the individual the option of not exposing themselves to what, supposedly, can cause discomfort, they are motivated to avoid annoying information by all means. This will prevent the person from being around people who talk about the feared topic, complaining that they feel offended by something very minor, or threatening to report anyone who suggests the feared topic.
Conclusion
A society in which there is greater awareness of injustices is a more egalitarian society. Knowing that not everyone enjoys the same rights and that they suffer violations is the best way to become aware that change is needed and one must participate more actively in the fight for equality.
The problem comes when, far from raising awareness, we try to avoid any message that may seem the least bit unpleasant. Acting like this only makes people not know what to deal with and feel uncomfortable by any small comment made without malicious intent.
The trigger warnings work but poorly. Far from caring for the mental health of the most vulnerable people, what it does is make them even more sensitive, in addition to making people who do not have to have lived a traumatic experience end up acquiring sensitivity through vicarious learning. The best way to treat a trauma, phobia or fear of the unknown is through controlled exposure in a therapeutic context, the opposite being totally counterproductive.
