Trigger Warnings

Trigger warning: this article may offend people who like trigger warnings.

Lochiel's Warning
Robert Inerarity Herdman (1829-1888)
Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND]

A new study is the latest to suggest that telling people they are about to experience offensive content does not seem to change their behaviour - and could even make them want to watch it.

Researchers found that during the course of a week, young people came across trigger warnings on social media dozens of times. Sometimes these came in the form of text, cautioning them that a post contained distressing content. Sometimes it was blurred images or video that they had to consent to see.

Whatever the variety of sources of the warnings, the response to them was largely the same irrespective of whether or not people said they suffered from trauma, they were ignored.

The study, published in the Journal of Behaviour Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, found that the 261 participants, 90 per cent clicked through, and some said they were more likely to so so precisely because of the warning.

Crucially, those reported as suffering from trauma were no less likely to click. One even told the researchers it was an inducement, saying: "Sometimes my brain wants to be triggered, so it grabs my attention more."

Victoria Bridgland, from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia said she was not surprised by the findings.

"There's a lot of political baggage in this conservation," she said. "This typically skews between two viewpoints. On one side it's that trigger warnings are coddling people, and students are snowflakes.On the other side, it's that we need to make accommodations for trauma survivors." There has now been a decade of research into this, of which her study is the latest. "They all come to the same conclusion. Trigger warnings don't really change people's behaviours or emotions at all."

Work in laboratory studies has found that among the most consistent responses to trigger warnings is - as in their real world study - to be intrigued.

(Tom Whipple, The Times, 2025)

One word sticks out for me in this article. Trauma. Some people read an article or a book or see a video or a play or a film and they can be traumatised? Trigger warnings, so it is claimed, are needed "to make accommodations for trauma survivors." I, in my ignorance, thought trauma meant very stressful, frightening or highly distressing events. Examples: being kidnapped or taken hostage or seeing death and destruction for many weeks in a war zone. Can being upset at something now be classified as traumatic?  Is any discomfort to be treated as potentially harmful?

It is a play renowned for its extreme violence, with scenes featuring execution, rape and mutilation. Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus even culminates with its eponymous Roman general feeding Tamora, the queen of the Goths, her sons "baked in a pie" before slaughtering her.

Titus Andronicus - Tamora
Samuel Woodforde (1763-1817)
Photo Credit: Royal Shakespeare Company Collection [CC BY-NC-ND]
   

But the play - and others like it - should not carry trigger warnings, according to the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who has declared that he "hates them".

Speaking with students in a Q&A ... Gregory Doran said anxious audience members should simply avoid plays so that they would not be upset by distressing content, the Stage reported.

"How do you do [content warnings] for Titus Andronicus?" Doran said. "You just don't come. Don't come if you are worried. If you are anxious - stay away"... 

Content warnings in the industry have become a point of contention in the past few years, and used as ammunition against "wokery" and "snowflake" mentality...

In 2021 the Globe theatre made headlines when it said it would provide warnings about "upsetting" themes - suicide and drug use - in Romeo and Juliet...

The actor Christopher Biggins responded: "Do we we have to have signs for everything under the sun? What they are trying to do is insulting to the mentality of theatregoers." ..

The actor Ralph Fiennes recently suggested modern audiences had "gone too soft". "I don't think you should be prepared for these things. Shakespeare's plays are full of murder and full of horror, and as a young student and lover of the theatre I never experienced trigger warnings like, oh by the way, in King Lear, Gloucester's going to have his eyes pulled out." 

Sir Ian McKellan also criticised signs at his own play, Frank and Percy, at  The Other Palace theatre in London, which warned of strong language, sexual references and discussions of bereavement and cancer. "I think it's quite ludicrous, myself," the 84-year-old said. "I quite like to be surprised by loud noises and outrageous behaviour on stage."

(Nadia Khomami, The Guardian, 2024)

If you are anxious or worried about plays in the theatre or films, or books or television programmes do your research beforehand and find out what they are about. Then act accordingly. If you come across something on the internet that upsets you don't go on that particular item again. You are an adult. Take responsibility for your actions.