Trigger Warnings: Helping or Hurting?
Trigger warnings are everywhere. University lectures, Netflix dramas, social media captions: “The following content may trigger emotional distress.”
And research reflects this growing presence. A study with German university students found 40% had seen peers demand trigger warnings, and 58% had encountered them in lectures. Support for trigger warnings is strong too:.83% of students in the same study believed upsetting material should come with a warning. In the US, a survey found that half of college professors use such warnings before introducing difficult content. A UK survey found 86% of university students in favour of trigger warnings.
The aim of trigger warnings is to help people emotionally prepare for distressing material or to opt out. Initially designed to protect trauma survivors from being blindsided by reminders of their experiences, trigger warnings have become a routine disclaimer for distressing content.
Advocates argue that warnings empower people to decide if they’re ready to engage, and that preparedness can ease emotional strain. I’ve felt that impulse myself. Years ago, I lent a novel to a friend who experienced a psychologically abusive relationship. The subject of the book was related to their experience, and though my friend knew it going in, I still gave them a heads-up. At the time, it felt like the responsible thing to do. And part of me still thinks it was. Besides, I’m a mental health practitioner—it’s in my nature to be mindful of these things.
But over the past 5 years or so, the research has made me sceptical. While trigger warnings come from good intentions and have become widely popular, scientific evidence increasingly shows such warnings don’t do much to reduce emotional distress, and might even backfire in some cases.
What does research say about trigger warnings?
Since 2018, when the effectiveness of trigger warnings began being rigorously tested, several studies have suggested they offer little benefit. I won’t get into all of those here, but a recent meta-analysis published in Clinical Psychological Science pulled together 12 studies examining the effects of trigger warnings. The analysis found that warnings had no significant impact on how people emotionally responded to distressing material.
What the warnings did increase, however, was anticipatory anxiety: the uncomfortable tension between seeing the warning and coming face to face with the content. The researchers suggested two reasons for this. First, most of us aren’t skilled at emotionally preparing ourselves in advance. And second, vague warnings tend to plant weak negative expectations. Those expectations spike anxiety, but once people engage with the material itself, those initial fears quickly lose their grip.
Another interesting finding was that when people were given the option to skip distressing content, most chose to view it anyway. Researchers suggested this might reflect the Pandora effect: our tendency to approach aversive or uncertain material, driven by curiosity about the unknown.
Taken together, this body of research, which covers much of the existing work on trigger warnings, shows that they don’t reliably reduce distress or deter people from engaging with difficult material. What they do seem to increase is anticipatory anxiety.
I also wondered whether people with PTSD would be an exception. But the evidence says otherwise. A study by Jones and colleagues—part of the earlier meta-analysis—tested trigger warnings on trauma survivors, including those with self-reported PTSD. Again, no evidence they helped, even when the content directly related to participants’ traumatic experiences. In fact, researchers found that trigger warnings increased anxiety for those with more severe symptoms of PTSD, though the effect sizes were small.
Another study published just a few months ago in Behavior Therapy by Bell and colleagues asked whether a softer, modified trigger warning might work better than a traditional one. Over 600 university students, including those with trauma histories, were randomly assigned to receive either a typical trigger warning, a gentler content note (“This may produce temporary distress, which is normal and manageable”), or a neutral message. The researchers found that neither type of warning made a meaningful difference to distress levels. This included students with higher anxiety sensitivity or trauma symptoms. In other words, even individuals reporting elevated anxiety sensitivity or post-traumatic stress symptoms experienced no reduction in distress when receiving a trigger warning, whether traditional or modified. The researchers concluded that “the best summary of the trigger-warning literature to date is still that trigger warnings appear to be either useless, or actually somewhat harmful.”
Research by Bruce and Stasik-O’Brien adds an important nuance to this conversation. They found that people’s attitudes toward trigger warnings aren’t solely driven by how many PTSD symptoms they experience, but also by how central they consider their trauma to be to their identity. Among trauma-exposed students, those with the most severe PTSD symptoms were the most receptive to trigger warnings. Interestingly, even participants with relatively few symptoms still strongly supported trigger warnings if they viewed their trauma as a core part of their identity. In other words, people’s receptivity to warnings seems to be about more than immediate emotional distress; it also reflects how they relate to their trauma and its place in their lives. While this doesn’t suggest that trigger warnings reduce distress, it does hint at why they might feel meaningful to certain individuals.
So where does that leave us?
It’s still too early to draw bold conclusions. After all, most of this research has emerged only in the last few years. Still, the findings so far are remarkably consistent: trigger warnings don’t reliably reduce distress, and they don’t prevent people from engaging with difficult material.
And yet, like so many things in psychology, the question isn’t just about whether something “works” in a narrow sense, but about context, meaning, and unintended consequences. There are a few important nuances I think we need to consider.
1.What trigger warnings represent matters too.
These findings don’t necessarily mean that trigger warnings are useless for everyone or in every context. People differ, cultures differ, and science is rarely absolute. There is still more research needed to better understand individual and cultural differences. The overall pattern is difficult to ignore, but studies like Bruce and Stasik-O’Brien’s remind us there’s value in understanding not just whether warnings “work,” but what they might symbolise for particular individuals.
There also seems to be a gap between the evidence and public perception. Although people overwhelmingly like and support trigger warnings, the research indicates they’re not particularly useful in terms of reducing distress. And this mismatch matters. If people start believing that trigger warnings protect them from emotional harm, they might grow dependent on them, even in situations where they’re not really needed. On the other hand, if most people support them, perhaps we shouldn’t dismiss that. Their popularity signals something meaningful: a wish to feel considered, respected, and given agency. Perhaps it’s not always about reducing their pain, but about recognising their experience.
2.Treating distress as harm can backfire.
We should ask whether treating emotional distress as inherently dangerous is really helping anyone, including those with trauma histories. This mindset can inadvertently encourage avoidance, and avoidance is well-documented to maintain or even exacerbate distress in the long run. Traditional trigger warning language risks reinforcing this, suggesting that unpleasant emotions or distress should always be sidestepped rather than faced with support.
We tend to underestimate people’s resilience and overestimate the harm of encountering difficult material. That’s not to say we should recklessly expose people to trauma-heavy content without any regard for their histories. But it is a call to remember that not all discomfort is inherently dangerous, and that people may not need us to shield them from every emotional bump in the road. If we’re not careful, we risk sending the message that distress is intolerable and that people are too fragile to withstand it.
3.What counts as a trigger?
This whole conversation also makes me wonder how we even decide what counts as triggering. Where’s the line? One person’s neutral academic topic might be another’s deeply painful reminder. Someone who survived a devastating earthquake might feel triggered in a geology lecture where earthquakes are discussed. But would a professor issue a warning there? Probably not. We tend to reserve warnings for content we collectively assume is distressing, such as violence, abuse, and death. If the goal is to anticipate every possible trigger, we’d quickly discover it’s impossible. And perhaps that’s the real issue here: we can’t bubble-wrap reality.
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Perhaps the real question isn’t whether to keep or discard trigger warnings, but how honest we’re being about their purpose. They may offer gestures of care, recognition, and agency, but we shouldn’t mistake them for psychological support or therapeutic intervention. As the research consistently shows, trigger warnings aren’t especially useful as tools for emotional regulation. The more meaningful work lies in helping people build tolerance for discomfort and ensuring those with trauma histories have access to proper mental health care—not in trying to preempt distress altogether.