Trigger warnings may not help students feel more supported, but safe space messages do.
A new study found that being told they were in a 'safe space' made students feel more comfortable, trusting, and positive toward the person delivering them.
Researchers from Flinders University and collaborators in the United States studied the responses of 738 U.S based university students.
Each student watched a short trauma-related lecture introduced by an instructor with either a trigger warning, a safe space message, both, or neither.
Students then rated the instructor on trustworthiness, care for student well-being, political leanings, and openness to controversial discussion.
Lecturer in Psychology Dr Victoria Bridgland, says these practices are common in university classrooms and are meant to support students emotionally, but they send very different signals.
"Some people believe trigger warnings help students feel supported by the teacher," says Dr Bridgland from the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.
"But our research shows trigger warnings fail to do that. However, saying the classroom is a safe space does make students feel more positive and comfortable."
The study found trigger warnings had little impact on how students viewed the instructor or classroom. This was true even though many students said they supported trigger warnings.
Safe space messages made a clear difference. Students felt more psychologically safe and more willing to engage in difficult conversations. They also perceived the instructor to be more caring and trustworthy.
Interestingly, safe space messages also signalled a political bias with students perceiving instructor who used them as more liberal and supportive of censorship.
"It's not just about the content being taught," says Dr Bridgland. "It's also about the emotional and psychological climate in the classroom."
Safe space messages foster trust and openness. But they also carry political signals that may affect how students interpret the instructor's neutrality.
"This matters because small cues at the start of a lesson can shape how students feel and behave," she says.
"Instructors need to be thoughtful about how they frame these messages."
The article, Sending Signals: Trigger Warnings and Safe Space Notifications by Samuel Pratt (University of North Carolina), Payton Jones (Pluralsight), Victoria Bridgland (Flinders University), Benjamin Bellet (Massachusetts Mental Health Center) and Richard J. McNally (Harvard University) published in Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied. DOI: 10.1037/xap0000541
Acknowledgements: The authors thank the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University for supporting and funding through their Extraordinary Claims and Extraordinary Evidence partnership program (Grant 204.03, awarded to Richard J. McNally).
