Dissertation

Trigger Warnings in the Classroom: Assessing the Roles of Appraisals and Stress Mindsets

ABSTRACT: Trigger warnings—notices about potentially sensitive material that might activate strong emotional or physical responses—have received polarized attention for their presence on college campuses. Some scholars argue that trigger warnings are “coddling the American mind”; whereas others argue that such warnings are essential to student success. Despite media attention, there is little empirical work on trigger warnings in the college classroom. Past research has conflicting results on the effectiveness of trigger warnings and none of these studies have fully investigated the mechanisms by which trigger warnings work. In order to address how trigger warnings function in classrooms, I conducted two studies. Study 1 was designed to collect descriptive data on students’ experiences with and understanding of trigger warnings and to collect pilot data on students’ mindsets about stress and appraisals of course material. Students were moderately familiar with trigger warnings and saw trigger warnings as facilitating classroom engagement. Students, on average, saw stress as debilitating and their course material as a challenge. Study 2 tested, experimentally, whether and how trigger warnings had positive or negative effects on knowledge retention and affect. Study 2 also investigated the role of stress mindset (manipulated experimentally). Overall, Study 2 tested a theoretical model, whereby appraisals explain the effect of trigger warnings on knowledge retention and affect and stress mindset moderates this effect. Receiving a trigger warning (vs. not) before viewing a video did not influence outcomes (i.e., knowledge retention and positive or negative affect). Moreover, there was no evidence to support the proposed model: appraisals did not mediate the effect of trigger warnings on outcomes and a stress mindset intervention did not moderate this (lack of) effect. Overall, these studies suggested that whereas students generally understand the purpose behind the use of trigger warnings in college classrooms (Study 1), trigger warnings—at least in the context of this experiment—had little effect on student outcomes (Study 2). Future studies should continue to investigate the influence of how course material is framed as well as mechanisms through which trigger warnings impact student outcomes.

Keywords: trigger warning, anxiety, stress mindset, stress appraisal

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