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. 2024 Dec 13:332941241308788.
doi: 10.1177/00332941241308788. Online ahead of print.

Students' Beliefs About Trigger Warnings

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Free article

Students' Beliefs About Trigger Warnings

A Timur Sevincer et al. Psychol Rep. .
Free article

Abstract

Trigger warnings aim to help people emotionally prepare for potentially disturbing material or avoid the material altogether. There has been a lively debate in society and academia whether the widespread use of trigger warnings helps, harms, or has no substantial impact. Recent meta-analytic evidence suggests trigger warnings have no effect on people's emotional reaction, avoidance, and comprehension. They do however heighten a negative anticipatory reaction. We examined students' attitudes toward trigger warnings in a non-English-speaking country - Germany, and whether their beliefs about the effects of trigger warnings on themselves and others match the meta-analytic evidence. Students held relatively positive attitudes toward trigger warnings and advocated their use. Their beliefs about the effects of trigger warnings however did not concur well with the actual effects. Our findings suggest that making students aware of the empirical evidence on trigger warnings would benefit discussions around trigger warnings.

Keywords: Trigger warnings; attitudes; avoidance; emotional reaction; student beliefs.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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