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A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

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Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#61

Post by wpietri »

lazide wrote: post #58
wpietri wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If I'm going to warn people about content, it's because of what those specific people might struggle with. It was something I understood better once I found a piece of pretty ordinary media traumatic. And here I should say: content warning for cancer and death. Some years back my mom was getting treated for a brain tumor. It was a glioblastoma, and as one of her surgeons explained, "This is the thing you wil…

Sorry to hear about your loss and experience. It does sound really terrible. The challenge society wide is, of course, where is the line, and when is it useful to do at all? Which the study seems to be saying, it isn’t generally useful for the ‘less common horrors’, at least not with a somewhat generic warning.

Sure. I think it's something we have to figure out jointly between people of different experiences. But I agree with others that definitionally the effectiveness for less common stuff can't be measured by looking at the general-audience reaction.

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#62

Post by XorNot »

sbf501 wrote: post #2

"Overall, we found that warnings have no effect on affective responses to negative material nor on educational outcomes (i.e., comprehension). However, warnings reliably increase anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material, or that they increase engagement with negative material under specific circumstances. Limitations and implicat…

There's a very practical use of trigger warnings that's existed uncontroversially for decades and it's the use of story tags for internet erotica, dating back to the usenet days.

Story tags there serve two important purposes: so you can find what you want to read, and not read that which you definitely do not.

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#63

Post by lanyard-textile »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #46
all2well wrote: post #13

“To many conservatives, trigger warnings are a symptom of a world gone mad: a fragilizing ritual meant to insulate the delicate worldview of a weak-minded generation.” Conservatives routinely get upset about the presence of gay people in media, among many other things. Is that somehow in a different category? (This is in reply to the article linked by the author of the study in that Twitter thread)

I think the overall concern is that people in general seem all too willing to ignore reality. I can't really speak for any particular group in US ( or even in the old country ), because I am sufficiently weird that I do not really fit anywhere. Yay me. That said, trigger warning is already a trigger word and may need to replaced with something else to avoid emotional reaction ( although I admit I do not have a good r…

[flagged]

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#64

Post by [deleted] »

romwell wrote: post #56
igorbark wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this analogy breaks down on a number of levels. 1. patients invented and self-prescribed the pill originally 2. the doctor has concluded that the pills are harmful by studying what happens who do not have the illness the pills are meant to treat take the pills 3. the doctor didn't really keep track of what doses were given to different patients i.e. 1. trigger warnings were not originally forced on people, they were…

Don't forget: 4. The doctor didn't keep track of of how many patients ditched him, forever, because the doc doesn't understand the above ----- Thank you for a thorough reply and debunking of the argument by broken analogy. The whole idea of content warnings is giving the audience a choice ; it's about informed consent — a concept that both HN and the researcher seem to struggle with. No shit Sherlock that a content w…

[deleted]

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#66

Post by zimpenfish »

Gare wrote: post #42
maxbond wrote: post #32

(TW: Suicide) I'd like to share a personal annecdote that I think may be instructive to people who have never found trigger warnings to be useful. Once a friend of mine wanted to show me a visual novel. They skipped the trigger warning at the beginning because they felt it was spoilery. We played through the whole thing in one night; about halfway through the story (given the path I took), we were lead to believe a c…

Was it DDLC? A 12-year old boy in Croatia commited suicide partly because of emotional trauma caused by it.

Do you have a reference for that? I can only find a 15 year old in Manchester vaguely linked to it (without any real evidence the game was involved.)

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manches...

> Ms Kearsley said it was 'commonsense' to question the game's emotional impact but recording a verdict of suicide, she said: "We can make no direct link between Ben's death and his online gaming. Ben was a young man who potentially had a number of complexities."

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#67

Post by maxbond »

Mezzie wrote: post #55

I struggle with trigger/content warnings as someone with PTSD stemming from severe childhood neglect/abuse (e.g. I was allowed to just rot in the basement for a week with a fever of 104+ as a child). The reason is because there seems to be a standardized list of 'real' triggers that people agree on, and I'm often triggered by depictions of loving families. Which nobody is ever going to warn for. I also have major dis…

Maybe a more generic tagging/metadata system would help people with more idiosyncratic/unanticipated trauma. Something I find promising in this is that it has the hallmark of many great accessibility solutions, it's useful for everyone even if it's more important to a specific group of people (eg, screen readers and sign language are just great tools, but are much more profound for people with sensory disabilities). It still wouldn't be perfect of course, things could be mislabeled, or the label you would want could still be missing, or like you mention you yourself might not entirely understand what you're looking for.

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#68

Post by asingh11 »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #3

So the reasons people are for this stuff are pretty uniformly incorrect and the reasons people are against this stuff are either also incorrect or possibly correct depending on the situation?

That's a fair point, but psychology is so malleable and that even if people believe that it helps them prepare/digest sensitive info, it will directly help them digest it ... placebo effect is real.

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#69

Post by esperent »

maxbond wrote: post #43
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. I am torn for several different reasons including the topics I would want to address, but I feel I should focus on one thing. That is a reasonable statement and even expectation on the surface. I might accept it as rationale for graphic movies and so on, but your example is visual novel, where you choose your own adventure - a form of media that is almost guaranteed to put you in unusual and unexpected situation…

There was a TW on the opening screen about suicide. I'd have liked to see it. Obviously that was my friend's error and not the game's, and we discussed this afterwards. What I wanted to highlight is that a trigger warning was erased, and this was a very vulnerable time for me when it would have been very useful. I'm not entirely sure I've understood your objection properly, but I'll try to address your questions. Yea…

I usually see two viewpoints on trigger warnings from reasonable people (i.e. not people caught up in US identify politics).

Those who oppose trigger warnings like the commenter above you, who believe that you should be ready to handle anything a piece of fiction throws at you. After all, it's just fiction, right? Generalizing, this usually comes from people who have never experienced deep trauma or at least who have never confronted it. Or possibly they have, but they were lucky enough to have an upbringing that gave them the tools to remain mentally stable while doing so. They also tend to be low in empathy - they believe everyone has a mental state similar to them so they can't understand, at an emotional level, why other people would need trigger warnings. For them, quite reasonably, trigger warnings are annoying spoilers and they dislike that.

Then there's the people who support trigger warnings. Often this comes from having experienced deep trauma without a support system (internal or external) that was strong enough to deal with it. Or they have observed this in people they love. These people know how fragile mental health is for many people and they want to start building a more supportive society, one small part of which is adding labels to fiction that will let people know when dangerous traumas might be triggered by reading it. And undealt-with traumas are dangerous - they are the basis for all kinds are dark behavior which I won't list here.

And then there's me. I just don't wanna read about sad shit. Give me happy fantasies man, not that dreary misery loving suicidal bullshit.

(Or maybe I'm in the second group but I've reached the denial stage)

Re: A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

#70

Post by killdozer »

all2well wrote: post #54
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the overall concern is that people in general seem all too willing to ignore reality. I can't really speak for any particular group in US ( or even in the old country ), because I am sufficiently weird that I do not really fit anywhere. Yay me. That said, trigger warning is already a trigger word and may need to replaced with something else to avoid emotional reaction ( although I admit I do not have a good r…

The point I was probably trying to make is that I suspect that the author of this study and the accompanying article probably has a particular political axe to grind. That's mostly just conjecture, though. Moral panics are nothing new, and (self-)censorship is nothing new either. I think it's naive to think that conservatives have "gotten over" gay marriage, or gay rights more broadly, especially given how recent pro…

Yes they're never going to stop trying to restrict and rollback the rights of minorities, they have a lot of money and power they're willing to deploy to this end. Maintaining these rights will always be a constant struggle.
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