Sep 18, 2023 05:18 PM
(This post was last modified: Sep 18, 2023 07:56 PM by C C.)
BELATED TRIGGER WARNING: The title of this post (above) contains a disquieting and potentially harmful 4-letter word.
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https://bigthink.com/thinking/trigger-wa...s-anxiety/
EXCERPTS: Trigger warnings on college campuses have been controversial since they became more common and attracted public attention in the mid-2010s. Proponents argue that these statements, intended to help individuals prepare for or avoid potentially traumatizing content, make classrooms safe for students. Critics contend that they stifle free speech, coddle students, and backfire by exacerbating negative reactions.
Students are also divided on them. [...] Scientists have now had time to examine trigger warnings through controlled experiments, and their findings broadly support critics’ points. Last month, a trio of psychologists affiliated with Flinders University and Harvard University published a meta-analysis aggregating all the recent scientific papers on the topic to answer four questions:
When the studies’ results were pooled together, the researchers found that trigger warnings had no effect on subjects’ emotional responses to the material, did not make them likelier to avoid it, and had little to no effect on participants’ comprehension. They did, however, slightly increase subjects’ anxiety prior to being exposed to the material.
[...] Despite their apparent ineffectiveness, trigger warnings appear to be here to stay in higher education... (MORE - details)
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NOTICE: Admittedly, perhaps the whole excerpt and the featured study should have been placed under a spoiler BBcode tag, with an external admonition. The very idea of trigger-warnings being impotent safeguards could be immensely distressing and an outrageous possibility to the sensibilities of delicate mindsets.
Given the prudish advisories, restrictions, fines, and censorship of the 19th-century and the first 60 or so years of the 20th, there were apparently fragile population groups in the past that also had to be cautioned about as well as protected from potentially offensive words, content, and material. So it's not like "adult daycare" is really something new. More along the line that "it has returned" or maybe never went away -- simply underwent a facelift or was expanded, refined into new levels of administrative and bureaucratic micromanagement.
- - - - - - - - - - -
https://bigthink.com/thinking/trigger-wa...s-anxiety/
EXCERPTS: Trigger warnings on college campuses have been controversial since they became more common and attracted public attention in the mid-2010s. Proponents argue that these statements, intended to help individuals prepare for or avoid potentially traumatizing content, make classrooms safe for students. Critics contend that they stifle free speech, coddle students, and backfire by exacerbating negative reactions.
Students are also divided on them. [...] Scientists have now had time to examine trigger warnings through controlled experiments, and their findings broadly support critics’ points. Last month, a trio of psychologists affiliated with Flinders University and Harvard University published a meta-analysis aggregating all the recent scientific papers on the topic to answer four questions:
When the studies’ results were pooled together, the researchers found that trigger warnings had no effect on subjects’ emotional responses to the material, did not make them likelier to avoid it, and had little to no effect on participants’ comprehension. They did, however, slightly increase subjects’ anxiety prior to being exposed to the material.
[...] Despite their apparent ineffectiveness, trigger warnings appear to be here to stay in higher education... (MORE - details)
- - - - - - - - -
NOTICE: Admittedly, perhaps the whole excerpt and the featured study should have been placed under a spoiler BBcode tag, with an external admonition. The very idea of trigger-warnings being impotent safeguards could be immensely distressing and an outrageous possibility to the sensibilities of delicate mindsets.
Given the prudish advisories, restrictions, fines, and censorship of the 19th-century and the first 60 or so years of the 20th, there were apparently fragile population groups in the past that also had to be cautioned about as well as protected from potentially offensive words, content, and material. So it's not like "adult daycare" is really something new. More along the line that "it has returned" or maybe never went away -- simply underwent a facelift or was expanded, refined into new levels of administrative and bureaucratic micromanagement.
