SIO393: Dr. Alan Smerbeck on Trigger Warnings

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 393. I'm your host Thomas Smith, and today we've got an interesting breakdown at the science of trigger warnings with none other than Dr. Alan Smirbeck, aka Stormy Decises, and tell you this, is a conversation, this is nuanced conversation. I think that there's, you land on trigger warnings, this conversation gives you a lot to think about and perhaps some data to work with. Excited to get on over to that conversation. Before I do, a couple little things.

For one, so many good reasons to join patreon.com/seriouspod. We've got the hangout. We got people who have signed up for games. I, and I will be doing a live hangout, that's Zoom, so that's like we're hanging out. For top patrons, we get to play games afterwards. We've got, I think we've already got enough signups, so that is for sure happening. Codenames coming at you, can't wait. That is October 26th, 3 p .m. Pacific, 6 p .n. Eastern, the, essentially the top two levels of Patreon, so for either show. So get on that if you'd like to join, it's going to be a lot of fun. So much to talk about, behind the scenes stuff, it's a hang, it's Lydia and I, there's games. Secondly, got Awful Movies three coming at you real soon with none other than Stormy Decisis, today's guest, that'll be Goodwill Hunting, haven't recorded that yet, but that'll be coming later in the month.

And as always, sign on to Patreon to avoid the auto ads, because they're terrible, you don't want to hear them, they're awful, avoid them, patreon.com series pod I want to note that pretty much as you're hearing this, I will have posted, for Normies, patrons early, but for Normies, over on Where There's Woke, the sixth and final installment of the Jason Kilbourne series, that is Professor gets canceled and harassed and forced to undergo racial sensitivity trainings and blah, blah, blah, blah, for merely, merely putting the first letter of a racial slur in a law exam question.

Series was truly, there was so much good. And I just have to say, the last part is just magical. I'm telling you, it's, it, magical, magical. And it's, I think it's, I found something amazing that you need to hear. So if you were snoozing on Where There's Woke, please unsnooze, because the Jason Kilbourne series is, is great. And the final part is, it's magnificent. I don't even know what to say. It's my favorite thing I've ever done, probably, it's the best.

So go check that out, but not before you hear my conversation with Stormy Decisus, right now, on Trigger Warnings. Here we go. Stormy, Dr. Alan Smirbeck, how are you doing today?

0:02:36 Alan: Am splen -tacular.

0:02:39 Thomas: That's a new one. I'm splentacular as well because you were just telling me there's a bit of an update on your little libraries, banned books project.

0:02:47 Alan: So first of all, I want to say that I'm absolutely delighted with the response. People have donated more than 50 books. And that's a lot. That's way more than I expected. I want to give some special shout -outs to our who have been placing books, Kevin, Sam, and Lance. Those are the people who are receiving the books and putting them in little free libraries. And I also want to give a big thank Bookishly, which is a business in the UK. They sell books as well as gifts for readers. They generously donated some nice read -banned books, bookmarks, which We've been putting in the books, which hopefully will entice more readers to take a look at them. Um, have continued, uh, and updated the project. Uh, definitely would be interested in more people who are interested in placing books.

0:02:55 Thomas: That's awesome.

0:03:21 Thomas: Nice. Yeah.

0:03:34 Alan: Um, if you live within the United States and you live somewhere where books are being challenged, restricted, or banned in a school or library, um, can sign up to receive books. Um, I have set up a website, it's sharebandbooks.com, and the band is b-a-n-n-e-d, so you go to shareband books.com and there is a link to sign up to place books, and there's also a link to a wish list where you can send banned books to people. Um, those will be placed in little free libraries where people can get them. Um, also know that it was originally on Amazon, which people weren't wild about, um, and I have moved it to Um, .org, which does like indie bookstores, so now that's where it's being purchased from, uh

0:04:15 Thomas: Oh, cool. This is just so amazing. Seriously, I think this is the coolest thing, Stormy. Just it keeps getting better and better. And thank you so much to the generous audience for taking you up on this in spades, as they say. I mean, this is really, really cool. I wanted to make sure we started off the top of the show with this because it's such good news. Congratulations, seriously, well done, all.

0:04:40 Alan: I'm, I again, I'm floored by how many donations there were and how quickly. I think it's really amazing.

0:04:46 Thomas: Right, well, I'll put those links in the show notes. Uh, more if you want to throw out that, that web address. It was, because, because I have no memory, something banned, something. Love it.

0:04:55 Alan: Sharebandbooks .com, and band is B -A -N -N E -D.

0:05:00 Thomas: All righty. We can get to our main subject today, which is, are you triggered, Libs? I can't wait to talk about trigger warnings with one stormy decisis. This is something I feel like I've covered before, but I know it's ever evolving and could definitely use a refresher. So we're going going to talk about, the you science of trigger warnings.

0:05:20 Alan: So for this, I'm going to be focusing on trigger warnings for potentially traumatic content, as opposed to trigger warnings, for example, for the use of a slur. I'm gonna be focusing on trigger warning that feel people are preventing or dealing with things that that induce severe anxiety, which is a slightly different question. Wanted to do was sort of start out with the psychology of anxiety disorders and PTSD, because you really need to know that to understand the research that you shows the benefits and risks of using trigger warnings. So,

0:05:25 Thomas: Okay.

0:05:55 Thomas: Right away, I, now I'm thinking, because I'm just putting this in the political lens, you know, and there's, feel like this debate has perhaps died down a little as the anti-woke have moved on to a lot more things, you know, like there's a lot, but I don't think it's gone away by any means. Is that your feeling as well?

0:06:11 Alan: Can tell you as a professor that professors still really are working out how to deal with it. So, for example, if I have a student in my psychopathology class, where I cover all the different mental disorders, and the student says, "Are you going to talk about pedophiles? Pedophilia, which is a a pedophilic disorder. That's a disorder." I'll say, "Yup, it'll be about one third of one class session. And if you'd like to miss that, skip it. I don't give a shit."

0:06:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:40 Alan: Do you, man. The other hand, when I'm teaching human sexuality and someone says like, you know, when are you going to reference rape and sexual assault? I'll be like, yes, I am. I'm going to talk about them all throughout the semester. Know, So, for example, if I'm talking about the physiology of an erection, of a penile erection, I might then mention, due you to this reflex physiology, it's very possible for a person who has a penis who's being raped to get an ereiction despite not being aroused, because I think that's an important and relevant fact that I would bring up during the physiology lecture.

0:07:13 Alan: And So, I'm if a student says, "Well, I can't handle that," then I would tell them, "This is not a good class for you, and let me help you find find a different class."

0:06:53 Thomas: Oh, Yeah, right. Hold on, just to make sure, I've heard a lot of the other side of this debate. So what you don't do is change your entire class for everyone, give them an A plus, and then stop teaching what you're teaching. That's not, not how you do it, yeah.

0:07:29 Alan: Know, but I do go to jail. Generally sued out of my very pants, and then I go to jail. Had students who started in a class, and we've talked about it and that this is not a good class for them. It is different depending depending on the level. I mainly teach undergraduates, and undergraduate psychology does not prepare you to be a therapist. I was dealing with someone who, let's say, was in a training program to be an therapist, if they were in a master's or doctoral program, who was a severe alcoholic, who says, you know, I can't listen to anyone talk about alcohol without it triggering my cravings. Really can't be aotherapist and expect to not hear hear people talk about alcohol. Like, That's not a realistic thing. And so I would have to counsel that person that either you have to get enough treatment that you are no longer feeling this way, or you really can't be a therapist.

0:07:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm- -hmm. Yeah.

0:08:20 Alan: But then there's other things that you probably could avoid if you're someone who says, I really don't want to offer therapy to rapists. Beings. They deserve therapy, but I just can't do it. Could operate a practice where Where if someone came in for services and they had history of committing rape, could say, well, I'm going to refer you to another practitioner and that would be fine. Line. Those that's sort of the level where I think well -intentioned people are having the discussion about when to draw those lines between, yeah, you you can prepare to be a therapist and decide you're not going to treat rapists, but you really can't prepare to be a therapist, and decide your never going to hear about alcohol. There's a line somewhere in between there. And I think right now there's, there's discussion about where that line should Yeah.

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:09:01 Thomas: And And that's my impression, just as a layperson seeing the bad faith kind of anti-woke debate around this, the trigger warnings are ruining school, and so you can't nobody can do and my impression would be, well, you you got to balance some things. It feels like if somebody has a trigger that's very reasonable to around, then you'd probably accommodate and work around it. If it's where, no, you'd have to literally change the class for everybody, then it's like, well, no, I guess that class isn't for you. That seems like the no -nonsense, obvious way to handle it. And it seems like that bears some resemblance to what's going on. Now, obviously, the details get a little tricky here and there. But broadly speaking, that's what I would expect that rational people would do, too.

0:09:40 Alan: And so I think most my colleagues who are considering these questions, you know, what do you do about somebody who wants to take an anatomy class who faints at the sight of blood? It's an undergraduate anatomy class. Most of the diagrams don't have blood. Do you actually need to see blood to do that class? Much can you realistically accommodate it? I have no idea. I don't teach anatomy. Of me. Think, again, that's the level that people who are engaging with this in good faith are really sitting down and, like, considering whether that is stretching that class beyond recognition. Then there's people who're just being assholes.

0:10:13 Thomas: Yep, yep.

0:10:14 Alan: So, all, so what I wanted to sort of start out with is the basic science behind anxiety disorders and PTSD, because that's going to inform the fundamental use of trigger warnings, that there really is no way around the sort of pros of it, as as the fundamental problem with them, that again, there really isn't a way around. So, first thing you need to know is that the a way PTSD starts is there's an actual danger, and of course you're scared of the actual danger. A mugger is pointing a knife at you, of course you're scared. Good to be scared of muggers. That fear might help you run away. But when two are paired together, one of the things can take on the properties of the other. So if your mugger was wearing a leather jacket, you might now be scared of leather jackets, even though they are not dangerous.

0:10:31 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah,

0:11:04 Alan: Well, they're dangerous to cows, but they're not dangerous to you, unless you're a cow. Um, cow in a leather jacket, that's like Mr. Peanut selling peanuts.

0:11:04 Thomas: I they could wear them fine. I don't know why that'd be particularly dangerous to them, but okay, sure, I'll go with you. Yeah

0:11:15 Alan: That there's something a little

0:11:15 Thomas: Yeah. That's it's like Buffalo Bill.

0:11:16 Alan: Uh, yeah, that's that's a little scary. Um, you fuck me, I'd...

0:11:20 Thomas: Cow's like, I'd fuck me. Sorry. Okay. Yeah.

0:11:27 Alan: No, we're not going to do that, okay, I'm moving on. Done. Addition, in PTSD, the actual danger, the mugging, is paired with something that is unpleasant but actually isn't going to hurt you, which is the memory of the mug. That's how a trigger can induce a disproportionate emotional response. So if you were mugged and you have PTSD, when you see a leather jacket, you can experience a level of panic that is, to some extent, debilitating.

Thoughts are racing, your heart is beating so fast, you're sweating, your muscles are tense. May, for a short period of time, be very much unable to do the things you need to do in life. You might not be a safe driver, you might not be able to concentrate on work.

It induces that strong response, because what it's doing is the The leather jacket got paired with the actual danger of mugging, and so you see a leather jacket and you feel just as scared as you would be if you were actually being mugged. This is the thing that trigger warnings can do, that there's really no workaround. You have PTSD, there are times when it is damn inconvenient to have a panic attack.

0:12:34 Alan: So a trigger warning can let you decide, As we're going to get to, it actually is good to have them sometimes. Um, what happens is we did the the sexual abuse episode were people who were like, "I'm driving to work right now, and I'm not going to listen to this episode because having a panic attack on my way to work is a really bad idea, but having it later when I'm at home might be okay, it might be less bad," and so this is something that trigger trigger warnings can do. They can allow people to opt out of content that will induce debilitating panic, and they can allow people to choose when, where, and how to take in that content. That's a benefit to trigger warnings, and there's absolutely no research that can get around that, because that's

0:12:34 Thomas: I know when it's terribly convenient, but. Oh, okay. Yeah, Mm-hmm, yeah, right,

0:13:17 Alan: Sort of fundamental to what PTSD is. That's step one. Step two, have to start with the idea of reinforcement. Reinforcement is any pleasant consequence, any pleasant thing that happens after an action. Kind of used to thinking of rewards as coming from authority figures, like you know you get a good grade, you get paid, you know the teacher tells you good job, but it's any pleasant consequence. So if you smile at your kid and they smile back, that's a reward. If you pick up an M&M and put it in your mouth and now you have the delicious taste of an M&M, that's a reward. Two kinds of rewards. There are adding rewards, like you didn't have an M & M flavor and now you do. Is also subtractive reinforcement, which is where you're reinforced by removing something unpleasant.

0:13:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:03 Thomas: Yeah I

0:14:04 Alan: You've got, how old is Remy now?

0:14:06 Thomas: Almost almost 10 months.

0:14:08 Alan: You got a 10 month old baby, he starts to cry, pick him up and he stops crying, crying. Just been rewarded for picking him up by subtracting that crying. Call that negative reinforcement. It's not negative in the sense of like bad or the opposite. It's negative in a sense of subtraction. Negative reinforcement is a kind of reinforcement, which means it strengthens the thing that came before it. If when you pick up Remy when he cries and he stops crying, you'll tend to pick him up more here.

0:14:37 Thomas: And he does that a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot yeah.

0:14:38 Alan: And That's How, um, babies train their parents is, is

0:14:42 Thomas: Could say he does it an unnecessary amount. We're already well trained and he's still screaming so hard. Getting worse, it's worse. Somehow it's still getting worse but anyway I get it. Okay.

0:14:45 Alan: Yeah. Well, and it can, might not even notice that it's happening, so you might find that like it turns out that Well, you might turn out that maybe he cries less if you hold him on your left shoulder than your right. You might not notice that happening, but slowly you start carrying more and more on your shoulder.

0:14:55 Thomas: No, I noticed. No No, I'm just kidding.

0:15:06 Thomas: Oh, really? That's interesting.

0:15:08 Alan: Yeah, no, it can happen without you even noticing it. So you, let's say, got mugged and now you're scared of leather jackets. So let's you're in the grocery store and you see someone with a leather jacket. Now logically you know this isn't the mugger, they're not gonna hurt you. They were paired together, so seeing the leather jacket makes you feel like you're being mugged. That's a terrible feeling. If you move away from that person, the terrible feeling goes away.

0:15:35 Thomas: Okay.

0:15:36 Alan: Just been reinforced for avoiding, and anything you get reinforced for gets strengthened. That negative reinforcement you got from getting away from the person with the leather jacket makes makes you now really, really want to get away from people with leather jackets. Normally, as you recover from a trauma, you slowly get less avoidant of the scary things. You know, at first you won't even go to the place where you were mugged, but, you know, after a while you go back there. In PTSD, you get in this cycle where you first walked away from the person with the leather jacket, and now you won't even go to the grocery store because THERE there might be someone with a leather jacket there. That's how PTSD really makes your life smaller, because now you're just avoiding lots and lots of things. So trigger warnings allow people to avoid having that panic attack at like the worst possible time. That is a benefit that there is no way around. And it is really, really important. They also help people avoid. Avoid and avoidance actually is a big part of what makes PTSD and anxiety disorders worse.

0:15:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:45 Alan: That's a con, that's negative to them, that there's really no way around.

0:16:49 Thomas: Interesting. Like there's it's just one of those double -edged swords, I guess.

0:16:54 Alan: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, you know, that's a lot of people in the trigger warning debates are just fucking assholes, and they're just like, oh, these these triggered libs, and they're all, they're, they're just being dicks, but really, is something to be said for, you, I was a therapist and I said, let's plan how to get you to never see the things that make you scared, that would be worsening your PTSD, that would not be helping you, you would ultimately have worse PTSD and worse symptoms, because the more avoidance, the worse it is, I

0:16:59 Thomas: Yeah.

0:17:23 Thomas: The other hand, I mean, a lot of those same bad faith people take the attitude that That, like, it's their job to to do exposure therapy on you or something. And it's like, well, that's also not true. Like, may still need the exposure therapy or something, but you don't have to do it on a professor's terms.

0:17:24 Alan: Yeah, therapy is a consensual relationship. What I always say is -consensual unexpected, surgery is just stabbing. If you're not a doctor, surgery is not something you should do. So inflicting things on people to deliberately trigger them is entirely unacceptable. Where we get the question is when you was not your goal, but that is a possibility. So if my goal is to educate my students on the relationship between alcohol intoxication and violence, a handy thing, but some of them may experience undue distress, so then we can actually have a debate. I was going to give an example of how you can avoid your way into an anxiety disorder. Did this to myself. So I live across the bay from Cold Stone Ice Cream, which is really good ice cream.

0:17:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:29 Thomas: I love Cold Stone.

0:18:35 Alan: There was a and it was freezing rain, and I wanted Cold Stone. But the way to get that would be to drive across a bridge over the bay at night in freezing rain. I was about to do it. And then I was like, you know what? It's a little dangerous and maybe I don't need like calories of ice cream right now.

0:18:46 Thomas: Oh, Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:56 Alan: Maybe I won't do it and I decided not to go. And when I did, I felt a little of that negative reinforcement, a little that relief, right? Then the next time I thought about going. It was raining. It wasn't freezing rain. I thought, you know, but maybe it's a little dangerous. Maybe I won't go. I didn't go, and I got that hit of reinforcement.

0:19:04 Thomas: Yeah, we've got addicted to not going to Cold Stone Wow.

0:19:17 Alan: That is exactly, it's addictive, that little hit of negative reinforcement, until eventually I realized I was scared of driving over this bridge entirely. Get to the point of a full -blown phobia, but I recognized it in myself that I had just slowly made myself scared of driving over this bridge. This can happen in PTSD, where there's something that wasn't a trigger initially.

0:19:38 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:19:39 Alan: So a person who wasn't initially triggered by, let's say, the mugger also had steel jewelry that clinked, and they weren't initially scared of that. But if they keep avoiding, they can become become scared of it. Of the tricky things about trigger warnings is that it's really obvious that lots of people are going to be triggered by, say, an image of domestic violence.

0:20:02 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:20:03 Alan: Remember that the things that you get scared of in PTSD. Some of them are like the thought of a gun.

0:20:10 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, I was gonna say from your first example, like trigger warning leather jacket is not a thing that exists. So yeah,

0:20:18 Alan: So in PTSD, people can be scared of really random shit. And could ask someone to give you trigger warnings for that. Not going to generally provide trigger warnings for leather jacket or steel jewelry because those are entirely idiosyncratic. For the most part, a lot of the debate about trigger warnings is not about this huge category of things that for people who have PTSD, the things that they're scared of are often really really separate to each person.

0:20:43 Thomas: Yeah. And I think the impression on the anti woke side is that, oh, you know what professors are having to do is keep track of every student's individual triggers. And then they have to say trigger warning for every leather jacket, not leather jacket. And then you could have triggers that are kind sum. So one might be the one way. Like, I don't feel like that's happening, but I could be. I'm not the professor. I couldbewrong.

0:21:10 Alan: Never had a student ask me to give them a warning for an idiosyncratic trigger, probably the common least thing I've had is, you know, phobias are mostly of the same kinds of things, like heights, bees, snakes, right? But people do have weird phobías occasionally, like a cat catphobia, right? Isn't that uncommon, but I had a student who had a reaction to hearing anyone talk about vomiting, or certainly seeing Vomiting, that they became nauseous and almost sometimes faint, which there are people who have this, and that is a rare but real thing, and that student asked me about, like, well, when are you going to talk about vomiting?

And I said, well, you know, here's the context in which I'll talk about nausea as something that happens in the anxiety disorders, and also as something that plays a role in eating disorders, and we sat down and talked about, like, how often is this gonna come up in class. I didn't have to track it for him, I just him about when and how often it was gonna come up, and so we could come to a decision. So that's the least common thing I think a student has ever asked me about. On and me.

0:21:26 Thomas: Right. Mm -hmm. Mm. Yeah.

0:22:19 Alan: He just wanted to know, like, no good for anybody if I vomit in the middle of your class.

0:22:23 Thomas: I was going to say, that's sort of for you as much as him.

0:22:29 Alan: Realistically expect to...

0:22:31 Thomas: Not vomit.

0:22:32 Alan: Yeah. And the student ended up choosing not to take the class because I said, Like all throughout the anxiety disorders, which is a big part of the class, I'm going to keep referencing nausea and vomiting because those are anxiety reactions, and it was like, if I miss that whole section, how far behind I'll be. I said, you'll be pretty far behind. He chose not to take class, which was a legitimate decision. I helped him find a new class. So that's the- that's the strangest one I've had, and that's not that strange, change.

0:22:36 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:22:59 Alan: Vomiting phobia is not that uncommon.

0:23:01 Thomas: It's still not just strange. Like, it's also just not that big of a deal. Like all told, it seems like there's a reasonable solution. You know, it might not be perfect for everybody, but you figure it out.

0:23:12 Alan: So actually, I used to write questions for a test prep company for doing like simulated, you know, SATs and stuff. And they use the same rules that the actual SAT does in writing questions. And one of the rules is basically don't include things that freak out a lot of people. So I wouldn't write like a reading comprehension comprehension question about having spiders crawl on your face.

0:23:37 Thomas: Right, right, right.

0:23:38 Alan: If you have a panic attack in the middle of the SAT, then it's not actually doing what, yeah, makes perfect sense. And so I also taught test prep at the time. And I actually had a student come to test prep who had a cat phobia. And there was a question on the SAT that had cats, and she had a panic attack, and her score was really bad. The answer was just she took the SATs again. And they weren't cats the next time.

0:23:42 Thomas: It's not fair. Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:00 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:24:01 Alan: And, you know, it was really a very solvable problem, it wasn't a huge deal, and yeah, so people who are like, "These students are demanding everything." The student just wanted to take the SAT again, and she did.

0:24:06 Thomas: But if it's not a big deal, how will I make it part of my broader narrative about how college kids and woke triggered mobs are ruining society? How will I do that then?

0:24:12 Alan: God.

0:24:23 Alan: Damn it, I don't know. Am I triggering you? Like, am I upset? Yeah, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of assumption that any attempt to address, um, distress, stress, is inherently a negative thing, that somehow that's bad. And again, I will get back to the fact that avoidance does have serious downsides. It's not Free. For example, if I was teaching a class on literature that addresses race in America from the Civil War of the 1950s, if that was the theme of the class, if I chose to not include any books that had racial slurs in them, that would be a less full class.

Like, that would be a class where I'm really not getting things. But I think if I were teaching that class, I would absolutely start the class if you go back several SIOs to the the episode we did on slurs, I would present that research, that to them, and show that like even when it's used in a completely neutral context, slurs actually have a negative effect. So what are we gonna do in this class? Let's all, all have a discussion and come to an agreement about what are we going to do when we run into this word in the text? You know, when you

0:24:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

0:24:57 Thomas: There's no course. Yeah.

0:25:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:27 Alan: Write an essay about the text, what are you going to put? Are you going say a slur? Are you're going to say like the n -word? Are going to actually write the word? Are we going put little asterisks in it? Are the pros and cons of each? And we'd have a discussion. And I think that would be a good discussion. I think it would be great way to to get students to think critically about language.

0:25:45 Thomas: That would be really good. I feel like that would be a very memorable and rewarding to take. I never had anything like that. I think it would have certainly, I don't know, I think I would have learned a lot from that. So that sounds like a good approach.

0:25:57 Alan: Actually remember in high school, we read Huck Finn, and we often in that class usually read passages aloud. The teacher had like a discussion with us about whether we would read passages from Huck Fin aloud, because of course, Huck fin uses the n word. We the students came to the agreement that we wouldn't. We decided we didn't want to. Would read the text silently and discuss it out loud without using that word. Came to that agreement. Don't know if the teacher started a plan for what to guide us to, but I remember as a student feeling like we came to that on our own.

0:26:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:31 Alan: And I thought it was a really great exercise. It was a great opportunity for us to really think about that. Most people who are engaging with this in good faith are finding it manageable. Most people aren't freaking out about it.

0:26:40 Thomas: Yeah. And it's also not even like there's one answer dictated from on high, really, is what it sounds like. I mean, it sounds like you can kind of, figure you it out for yourselves, but on a maybe even on a class by class basis. Does that sound right?

0:26:54 Alan: Absolutely. Like I told you, you know, when I teach psychopathology, my attitude to someone who doesn't want to hear about child adult sex behaviors is, look, it's like one third of one lecture. Skip it. You know, there's going to be like question on the final. Just get it wrong. I don't care. You can still get an A.

0:27:05 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

0:27:12 Alan: Just skip it. Nobody cares. Whereas when I'm teaching human sexuality, my attitude is, if you really don't want to hear about that at all, that's not going to work. Then we can't take this class. I can also even then how decide evocative I want to be. When I was teaching a lesson on domestic violence, I included an image, of a man who's very very clearly about to punch his partner. She's cowering and she's scared. This was very early in my time as a professor. So I was still being observed, like other professors would come see me and give me feedback. The observing professor said, like, do you think you need to use that image? Do you think that it really adds something? I was like, ah, but you know, I think it's a really evocative image. He's like, yeah, it's really evociative image. We talked it over, and I've now switched it, and I have an image of a man making a fist, but there's no cowering woman. So it's a much less evocative image. No It's student ever complained.

0:27:12 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Right.

0:28:02 Alan: But that professor pointed out to me that was there actually a benefit? There might be a downside. Was there actually a benefit? And I decided there wasn't. So on trigger trigger warnings. I said, there really isn't going to be any research anywhere ever that can take away that benefit of, it can help you avoid having a panic attack at the worst possible time. There's no research that can take that away.

0:28:09 Thomas: Yeah right.

0:28:25 Thomas: That's That's just math. Yeah it

0:28:27 Alan: Right. Of the research that has been done has not shown a lot of benefit other than, again, of it is ever going to take away that avoiding the panic attack thing.

0:28:27 Thomas: Doesn't -hmm. Hmm.

0:28:36 Alan: Been a meta -analysis, which is, again, a thing where they find all the available studies and sort of combine them. What they found is that, generally speaking, if you give someone a trigger warning before distressing content, experience the same level of distress as if you hadn't given the warning. Fact, there's some evidence, although studies have gone both ways on this, there is some evidence that they actually experience more anticipatory anxiety. So they're like, oh, it's coming. I'm going to be a little worried. And then when they actually see it, they feel the same. They don't feel any better.

0:29:09 Thomas: So what kinds of triggers are these? Because are we talking about specific like PTSD triggers for people who would be triggered by that? Or now is we're just talking about like, oh, there's violence in this or there's sexual assault in this.

0:29:22 Alan: Are basically two broad categories of studies. There's studies that use the general population, and they use things that most people really don't like. Like one of the more common things to use is a gory image. So like an amputation, right? Know, something that most people really don't want to see, really gross. So in general, what we find is that if going to see it, the warning doesn't seem to help.

0:29:49 Alan: Now, Remember, for benefit we can't get away from is if you give the warning and then people don't look, right.

0:29:48 Thomas: Yeah, that makes sense. Right. Yeah. They're just like, all right.

0:29:57 Alan: That's a very different thing. But for example, if I'm about to show an image in class, if I was going to use that, that evocative domestic violence image, if I said, "Now I'm going to show you this image," and then I showed it, the research says that it doesn't actually do much. So,

0:30:12 Thomas: But to talk personally for a minute, I now just never, ever, ever want to hear or read or see anything about violence against children again in my life. Like, I'm just done with that as a topic. And there's no exposure therapy that I need. There's no sense in which someone needs to, like, help me get over the fact that I just don't want to see that. Like, I just don't want to see violence against children or read about it. And I have a really hard time.

Almost had to quit the Internet a few times when there's particularly bad things going on, because like there's no warning and not really any way to warn me of that because it's like just random, you know, fucking headlines. People put this shit in headlines. It's like that has now ruined my week. Like, I don't even know, you know, like it could be any length of time. And I I do' don't really blame anyone for that.

I'm But saying with this is, if if I was in a class or something where it's like, hey, there's going to be violence against children, I can say, oh, okay, bye. And then I am much happier. And there's no study in the world that's going tell me that that's bad. Like, do not want want to be anywhere

0:31:13 Thomas: Near that.

0:31:13 Alan: That One benefit that we can't get around, which is if the trigger warning leads you to choose away from the content, you will definitely feel better. Now, that is that avoidance, which Does strengthen it. Then you have to decide whether strengthening that aversion is a good thing or a bad thing. Thing. Anxiety disorders, it does make them worse. Your aversion to hearing about violence against children is limiting you in any way that you think is is not outweighed by the avoiding that distress. Talked So a little bit about before we did the child sexual abuse topic, about the fact that it would be upsetting to hear, but worthwhile, because we were talking talking about how to prevent it. So you'd want to weigh those things and come to a decision that's comfortable for you.

0:31:16 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

0:31:57 Alan: So, yeah, that's the benefit we can't get away from. But if if you just give the warning before showing it, seems to be very small or non -existent. And there may even be an increase in anticipatory anxiety. So,

0:32:09 Thomas: Yeah. That's to know, because this is where I've actually kind of had a problem with trigger warnings. And I would like you to subscribe to my new channel where I talk about how the woke left has gone too far. Just kidding. Like, But I see a lot of people, I I haven't seen as much anymore, but I've seen people, they'll like Facebook posts where there'll be like, "Content note: bees." I saw some bees today, you're like, well, that that just, the you already, the word was already there, it didn't do anything, you know, like there'll Beath ones that like that where I'm like, I don't really know what that does. I mean, it doesn't, I guess it's not hurting anything, but

0:32:40 Alan: Well is it actually, remember, because they're actually, that avoidance actually does have some negative effects.

0:32:45 Thomas: Well, but if the post itself was nothing more than the very word that you're avoiding, then you already saw it when you got the content note to begin with, so you didn't even really avoid that. Right.

0:32:54 Alan: There actually are some possible negatives, even to that. Meta -analysis is quite a strong research finding because it combines across many studies. Studies. This I'm about to present to you is from just a couple of studies, and so it's not as strong. People who have anxiety disorders often have beliefs that they are very vulnerable to their anxiety.

So they might think, "If I get extremely frightened, if I panic, I'll go go crazy, and I'll never be okay again," or that "I cannot ever learn to handle this. I will be this way forever. Am ruined. I'm tainted. I am weak." Those kinds of beliefs seem to make anxiety disorders worse.

Is some evidence, and again, I would say that this is a that that I'm not willing to like go all in on yet, because there, some very preliminary studies, but there are some preliminary studies that things like content warning, bees, conveys the message to someone who has a bee phobia that, um, they can never handle it.

That, you know, they're, that, know, oh, might increase a belief, like, if I get my phobia triggered, I'll go crazy, or I'll be ruined, or I can't handle it, it's a catastrophe. We call that anxiety sensitivity, which is when you're scared of being scared. So there is actually a possibility that some of these trigger warnings increase anxiety sensitivity, because they kind of send the message, you can't handle being scared,

0:34:17 Thomas: Interesting.

0:34:17 Alan: Right? I have to protect you from being scared and therefore it must be that you can handle it. That belief that you you can't handle being scared does seem to make anxiety disorders worse. The flip side is if you really can't hand being scared, like if you're driving your car and, you know, a news story comes on about some horrific thing and you have a panic attack while driving, then that's really not great. For something like, you knows, trigger warning bees, something that could be happening as a negative is that for someone who has a bee phobia could actually be sending them the message, you can't handle this. Too weak. And that is actually not a helpful message.

0:34:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, Guess I'm also drawing a distinction. Yeah. So that's all point taken. I'm also drawing another issue out, which is it's one thing if it's like, hey, content note bees, and then it's five paragraphs about how I was stung by bees, there were bees in my mouth, there were views in my ears, they're like, okay, yeah, okay. I get that. That's going to be but it but the trigger content note being just the same word that that there's basically all that was in the content seems like it has to be nothing to me. Like, I can't imagine.

0:35:19 Alan: Mean, the only thing I could see with that is if they're put in a consistent format, that people could have browser add -ons that block those posts. So if people always put CW, content warning, and so you just write any CW if any time in the next 10 words is bees, block that post for me. I guess you could do that, but that would be avoidance, and it would strengthen your phobia. Know, again, it's cons.

0:35:29 Thomas: Oh, OK. Yeah, sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah? Other question is, this is might just be more for me, but my example with violence against children, it's it's anxiety. Is you're talking about exclusively an anxiety-based thing, because my, that's a depression thing for me. And so, is there similar

0:35:56 Alan: It actually also applies to negative emotions, sadness, depression, disgust, anger, hopelessness. Ever had a song you can't listen to because it makes you bawl your eyes out? Avoiding That song strengthens that. The, if you wanted to make that stop, the way to make it stop is to listen to the song a whole bunch, which will suck and you won't Like it.

0:35:57 Thomas: Uh, -huh? Yeah.

0:36:16 Thomas: Let Me, let me dig into the details. When you say makes it stronger, I feel like that, I need more information, you

0:36:23 Alan: The, think the bridge example is the best one. So at first, what I was afraid of was driving across a bridge at night in freezing rain, where realistically the danger was low, but there probably was a tiny bit of danger. When I avoided that, my fear grew, and the realm of what I feared grew into, well, then it was driving in the rain, then it was driving at night in good weather. And so that fear got stronger in the sense that it covered more things.

Another way that we can talk about fear as being stronger, and easiest to talk about with fears, but it can be other emotions, is how much it restricts you from doing. I just won't drive across the bridge to get ice cream, that's not a huge restriction. If I start, well, I don't want to drive across any highway overpasses, and now I have to spend 45 minutes to get to work instead of 15, that's a bigger fear.

That sort of expanding of what you're avoiding is, that's sort of what we mean when we say it's getting bigger. Your level of distress if you were exposed to it. So if you then have to, if someone dragged me onto that bridge, at first I would have been like, well, this fucking sucks. As my fear grew, if you dragged me onto that bridge, I'd be like, okay, but actually, here's the thing about bridges, and why I really hate them right

0:37:36 Thomas: So I, I also want to know what you're talking about, this was something in a, was this the meta study, or was this a different thing, just That Demonstrates this idea that the thing will get worse, yeah.

0:37:42 Alan: Which One Like several decades of psychology. I, that's one of the most well-established findings in psychology, I'm afraid. Like

0:37:54 Thomas: No, No, no, want to know the details of what, because like, guess, I, where I'm getting hung up is there are plenty of things in life that I think you just don't need and don't see why it would be unreasonable to live a life where you don't have to hear or see awful violence against children. And I don't understand why that would be something that is like, no, that has to be part of your life.

0:38:14 Alan: Question is how big the thing you're avoiding gets. So if, if what you avoid to say is actual photographs of injured children, then yeah, man, just avoid those photographs. But if it keeps growing to the point where, for example, if one of your children skins their knee, you run away because you can't tolerate seeing your child in pain long enough to, you know, tidy up their skinned knee, then that becomes a problem. So the difference between normal anxiety and an anxiety disorder.

0:38:42 Thomas: I'm reacting to this idea of inevitability that this keeps getting worse and worse to where, like you say, that you can't even, again,

0:38:47 Alan: Oh, okay. I get avoidance, it. The extent to which avoidance leads to this out-of-control cycle has to do with a lot of things. One of those things is anxiety sensitivity.

0:38:58 Thomas: This is depression for me, not anxiety, but yeah.

0:39:01 Alan: Well, there's the same thing of people who fear, like, if I get sad, I'll be overwhelmed and I'll be depressed forever. So there's depression sensitivity too, but there's not as much research on it. Things like anxiety sensitivity, something called catastrophizing, which is when you think something bad or see something bad, you immediately jump to the worst possibility.

So instead of thinking, if I'm on that bridge, if I kind of skid out, I might scrape my vehicle against the side rail, then I'll be much less frightened than if I think if I skid out I'll probably fall into the bay and drown. Some of those cognitive styles affect things, your genetic predispositions affect things. Also basically how far you take the avoidance, so if at some point you draw a line, you're like, okay, this will be unpleasant, but I can do it, then you stop that cycle from going further.

Whereas if you keep avoiding, then, I mean, yeah, this does happen. So it doesn't happen always to everyone in every circumstance. Anxiety disorders, again, which is where the most research is, but the others are actually pretty well researched, at least depression and anger. Disgust is a little less well researched. I mean yeah, I would say that this definitely happens, that these conditions are pretty common. So I wouldn't say it's universal and inevitable. I'd also point out that you're saying, like, well, why should I have to look at images of violence against children? You don't. You know, if you don't

0:39:10 Thomas: Okay, well,

0:40:30 Alan: Want to see that, don't see that.

0:40:31 Thomas: That's exactly what I'm interacting to. I've got, it's, I wanted to get a sense of a more tangible sense of like, what are we dealing with? How, you know, how bad does something get? How inevitable? How a percentage of people? Or is it the case that, this and is how I think of it, but I'm not a scientist. I think I can just avoid that forever. It's not going to get any worse. And there's, literally no cost to it for me, because I'm just not going to see this particular really horrible thing. The sense I'm getting from the discussion is that, no, there's this inevitable march toward all of a sudden now I can't even like read the word child and violent or something, you know, like I, that seems wrong to me.

0:40:32 Alan: Yeah, So what I would say is if it expanding to a point where it becomes a problem, then that's an issue. If you don't see it expanding, it then might be totally fine. Or if it doesn't expand in a way that is a problem for you, then I don't care. Big deal. Um, an article that's actually so new, I can't get my hands on it, on something that's really, really interesting to think about, which is, if something, you know, has this precautionary effect, what happens when we apply it to people who don't have disorders?

0:41:39 Alan: They looked at the sorts of things people do to protect themselves from anxiety, like, safety behaviors like, well, I'll be OK as long as I take deep breaths, or I'll be OK as long as, you know, I clutch this stone, this superstitious object. What they found was that when people who do not have an anxiety disorder do those behaviors, they actually get more anxious because that's actually a form of negative reinforcement, right? It's, if this is a kind of avoiding, I'm avoiding just doing it regular, and I'm only going to do it with this special protection. So that sort of goes toward answering your question about, you know, will it inevitably spiral up? This definitely doesn't say it will inevitably spiral up. It does say that for some people, some of the time, yes, that happens. That also gets to the question of when something is sort of made universal, something that only helps a small number of people, how that affects the general population isn't always the same.

0:41:11 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah right

0:42:37 Alan: The analogy I like to use is HIV testing. If I have an HIV test that's 99% accurate, and I were to test every single person, I would get so many false positives. In fact, I Would get way more false positives than true positives. That's not without cost. If you were told you had HIV, one, you'd experience a lot of distress. You might change your behavior in unhealthy ways. You might, for example, decide, well, I'm not going to bother quitting smoking. I've already got HIV. You might choose to have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV because, well, I've already got it.

Which, by the way, don't do that. You might have different strains. That universal screening is actually not necessarily a good thing. We'd have to actually weigh the benefit of the true positives we would catch and get those people on antiretroviral drugs versus the harm to the people who get the false positives. So when it comes to the trigger warnings, it does seem that if you do this, you give these safety behaviors to people who do not absolutely need them, some of them, some of the time it might actually have some negative effects. Then we balance that against the people who are avoiding having a panic attack

0:42:49 Thomas: Yeah one percent of the yeah Yeah. Right.

0:43:06 Thomas: Right, yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah,

0:43:48 Alan: While driving a car. So that's really, really hard to weigh because those are a very different effect. You know, it's not like money that I can compare and different people bear the costs and benefits.

0:43:48 Thomas: Yeah, yeah! Yeah, that's a tough one!

0:44:00 Alan: It's difficult. And my whole message of this is that it is not the case that the people who are anti-trigger warning are 100% wrong about everything, even though I wish they were because they're mostly assholes, like that my favorite onion headline which is uh, it's something like, "Tragedy: Worst person," you know, is right about something. So, it, people who say like the trigger warnings are all terrible, they're wrong, but the idea that they do have some negative effects isn't entirely false. If I put on like a general trigger warning, like, "Hey everyone, watch out, this is going to have portrayal of sexual assault," someone who had some mild anxieties, I might actually be making their anxiety worse. Someone who has PTSD following a rape might be able to avoid having a panic attack at an inconvenient time. Probably both of those things are true. So,

0:44:11 Thomas: Mm -hm. Yeah. Right, right, yeah...

0:44:56 Thomas: I want to make sure I have a solid understanding of the scope of what we're talking about. Because there's some sense in which a trigger warning or a content note, there's a sense in which it's like, I don't view it any differently than like, okay, this is country music. And I'm like, well, I'm fucking not listening to that. And I don't really think you'd say that there's some risk that I get this avert, you know, that I, oh, no, now that avoidance of country music is going to mean that you hold, you know, like, there's some sense in which it's like, if I have a preference, like, I don't want to watch violent stuff, or I don't want to, you know, like that kind of thing. Do we expect the same drawbacks?

0:45:31 Alan: You're getting that negative reinforcement. So if you're being presented with the option of listening to some music you don't like and you choose not to, you don't feel that profound sense of relief of I was extremely distressed and now I'm not.

0:45:45 Thomas: I DON'T LIKE COUNTRY MUSIC QUITE

0:45:48 Alan: I Don't know. Now, so for most, you don't experience, you know, your heart racing, your palms are sweaty, you don't have that, and then, phew, it's gone, I feel better. That's generally the difference. If you offered me an option of a food I don't like, I'll be like, no, I don't want it. I don't really feel relief because I never really felt all that tense. Now, for people who have something called avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, for them the mere thought of being shown an unpleasant food, they start feeling intense distress, and so when they say no, they feel a lot better and

0:45:48 Thomas: A BIT.

0:46:26 Thomas: Interesting. Okay.

0:46:27 Alan: Something like avoiding country music, I think, for most people, you never felt that distress to begin with. So you don't experience much negative reinforcement because you don't experience much relief.

0:46:37 Thomas: That's interesting, so it does seem to be, and again, that's why I kind of want to understand, like, how this applies in everyday situations. I still feel like just in general, um, notification that some for particularly distressing content in a class, or or whatever it might be, a movie, a show, how you looking at that, like, benefits and drawbacks of that? Because that still, to me, seems like there's so many straightforward benefits that it seems like I would almost insist on that kind of thing if I were in that position, to have to, you know, I don't want to accidentally have to consume something that I really don't want to consume. But how are you looking at that?

0:47:14 Alan: I think it really depends. I would say that probably the best science right now is that you're best off, I mean, don't know. Because, like I said, the benefit of avoiding an inconvenient panic attack is a big benefit and it is absolutely real, even for people who have full-blown PTSD, avoiding even mild triggers. So if you get to the point where, like, well, you've been sexually assaulted and you want to avoid an intense discussion of sexual assault, that's going to cause a panic attack, that is pretty, you know, narrow. If it's gotten so broad that now you're avoiding the word sex, more you would avoid broader and broader things, that is actually worsening your PTSD. Now then we get to the problem that you're a professor, not a therapist, and it is not your job to try to treat people's PTSD, so

0:48:05 Thomas: Yeah. Well, not only that, once again, I think you're kind of just focused on one subset, because pair together all the other people in the class or in any situation who may just have a preference to not see certain things. And it feels like that's inarguably good.

0:48:20 Alan: Again, that's where the data seems to say, so when give a trigger warning, people do become more tense than just displaying the information, so they actually have more anticipatory anxiety, they tense up before seeing it, and then they're just as tense when they see it. There's,

0:48:37 Thomas: Right. Again, so I was talking about the people who just end up not watching it again. Like there's music. I'm not listening to it. Violent movie. Don't want to watch it.

0:48:46 Alan: If the idea is offering people the option of whether or not to consume the content, One, it definitely avoids the discomfort. There is some evidence that it may be increasing people's beliefs that, for example, that if I were to be uncomfortable, that that would be unbearable and I can't handle it. That's a belief that does somewhat increase the risk of anxiety disorders.

We're talking about a small increase in a belief that increases the risk of anxiety disorders, so that that harm seems to be small, but that is assuming that this avoidance thing seems to happen at all, and I will tell you that what research there has been on that, so again, the most common thing they use is gory pictures, is they have students read, uh, an essay, and they blur out the pictures and say, like, well, this is going to to be gory, but, you know, if you want to see it, you can click on it.

And they find that almost everyone clicks on it, given the option to avoid, almost no one does when you don't already have full -blown PTSD. Thing that you might think that they would do is that people would prepare themselves effectively, like they might, calm you themselves. They might take some deep breaths.

0:48:50 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I'm in the percentage that doesn't. Okay. Okay. Maybe that's coloring the kind I am. Yeah. Yeah, very weird. Steal your nerves.

0:50:03 Alan: And people don't seem to do that.

0:50:06 Thomas: Is do we know that that's a possible thing to do like scientifically or is it just that people don't do it?

0:50:11 Alan: Like it might be, it seems like people certainly aren't doing it intuitively. Could certainly imagine a therapist training someone to do that, and it seems plausible that, you know—so if you're afraid of leather jackets, and I'm like, okay, now you're going to drive past that biker bar, you're not going to go in, because why would you go in? It's no point. But you want to drive past it. What are you going to do to prepare yourself? That being said, preparing yourself is an avoidance behavior. So I might teach them to prepare themselves at first because you've got to drive pass that because you got to get to work. Then eventually we might say like, okay, now let's see if you can drive past that without first, you know, doing your minute meditation. Do think it is possible to use trigger warning to effectively prepare for content, but what research there is says that people don't actually do that, at least not without training.

0:50:15 Thomas: Hmm. Huh.

0:50:58 Alan: Now you tell people, hey, there's about to be this image, and people don't effectively prepare themselves. Instead, they seem to make themselves more tense. So for example, if there was going to be an image of an injured person, an unhelpful thing to do would be to start thinking, what if it was my family member who was injured? That's going to make you more tense versus saying like, okay, I'm going to relax myself.

I'm going to, you know, sort of think about this very in a detached way without really getting too into my emotions about it. It seems that people tend to do the former. Doesn't mean it's not possible to do The Ladder, but it does seem that kind where people start. Definitely not opposed to trigger warnings. I think they absolutely have a use. Ithink they're very important for a lot of things, but I do think that if we're gonna, you consider them, do they have some downsides. The downsides seem to be a mild problem for a large number of people, and the upside is a benefit that also has a downside for a small number of people, and and I don't know that there is an absolutely best way to balance that, but

0:51:52 Thomas: Or a small group of people. Yeah interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely seems like a philosophical question, but

0:52:03 Alan: I would definitely say that the people who are like, well, you know, therapy, so we should just be throwing things at people just to fucking traumatize them, that is absolutely false. That's nonsense.

0:52:12 Thomas: Yeah, that's no question. Yeah, I, and I'm also just like, honestly gaining more perspective on why maybe it's, it's like I'm having a hard time with this conversation a little bit, but it may truly be that I'm in that minority. Like, for example, I, I was doing a play in college called Dead Man Walking, and uh, I had a small role, which is that I was a murder victim. I was one of the murder victims, and some reason they decided to do the murdery part like as a, as a visual, like a film or whatever. And so they were going to like show that in the play on a screen. And so we were prepping for that and, like, you know, makeup and all that kind of crap. And I remember the guy who was kind of in charge of some of the design was walking around, you know, giving to the people involved about it.

He was like, all right, how's your stomach? And, you know, most everybody else was like, oh yeah, here, I can look at these pictures. And he had like, I don't know, police fucking pictures of murder victim, who knows? And he comes to me, he's like, all right, how's your stomach? I was like, oh no, no, not doing that. And then he, he'slike oh, okay. And then I didn't do it and I went on with my life happily ever after.

And that person, like, I'm not going to look at something gruesome. So these things, for me, I'm thinking of them, I think maybe in a little bit different way where I'm like, I don't understand how it could possibly be a bad thing to tell me, like, yeah, there's going to be a stabbing victim in this thing, which is something I don't think humans need to see, see, particularly, like, I don't think that that's anything that needs to happen unless you it's for your job or something.

But I just mean like in an everyday sense, and so I use that information to just not see it. And maybe it's the fact that I'm not, if there's no big, like, oh, I was so tense and then I felt better, maybe that's part of why it doesn't spiral, but go

0:52:12 Alan: Oh, Well, what you're talking about is something that you can successfully avoid without it impinging on your life. By definition, someone who has PTSD, I mean, avoiding muggers isn't PTSD. It's when you are so afraid of muggars that you won't leave your house at night, or

0:53:52 Thomas: Yeah. No. I know, I know, no, I don't want to go down, down this road, because I want to make sure what I've been trying to do is stepping out of the conversation, specifically the PTSD and the anxiety. And you look at things like for a class or for a show or a movie, like warning people about the content, you have to take everybody into consideration. So you, people who have absolutely no PTSD or anxiety disorder, but they're like, I don't want to watch a violent thing, know? And I feel like that's inarguably a benefit.

0:54:30 Alan: The best available research says that if you're looking at the general population and you give them trigger warnings, you probably are slightly increasing their risk of developing an anxiety disorder. Probably, possibly. I mean, I would say that the research isn't clear.

0:54:45 Thomas: Yeah. Why I brought up the country music comparison. Comparison.

0:54:45 Alan: Um, it actually does seem that, first you of all, if you give people the option, a lot of them, most of them do still look. And, it turns out that, um, having the warning doesn't make looking any easier. Easier.

0:54:48 Thomas: Yeah. That's what's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, and

0:55:02 Alan: Those people, there might be no effect. There might be a very mild negative effect. No one is saying that trigger warnings are just creating anxiety disorders left and right. One thinks that. They might be related to some of these things that are risk factors for disorders like anxiety sensitivity. So in other words, if you tell people, all right, I'm going to show you a picture of a murder victim, are you going to be okay? You might find that if you say that to a hundred people, a few of them are now a little bit more scared of their own anxiety. Now a littlebit more thinking, if I get I'll go crazy. I'll fall apart. That puts those people at a slightly higher risk of anxiety disorders.

0:55:22 Thomas: Hmm. Mm.

0:55:49 Alan: Risk? Probably not. Honestly, I don't know. And I got to tell you, the studies that support that, there's just a couple of them, and they haven't all been replicated. So I'm not solid on that. But I would say that the studies showing that for the most part, if you say, all right, I'm going to show you a picture of a murder victim, are you okay with seeing it? Most people don't get a lot of benefit from that. That. The benefit that is very, very clear is for people who have a full -blown anxiety disorder is not having that panic attack.

0:55:58 Thomas: -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they don't want to go into an inconveniently timed yeah sure

0:56:20 Alan: For the general population, the benefit appears to be small or none. That's what most of the research is saying. Doesn't mean that there aren't, for individual people, for individual things. Would say that particularly when you have these very tiny effects, there can be a lot of spread, you know, there can be some people who just absolutely can't stand a thing, but that is sorta how the the data seems to be going. Okay.

0:56:20 Thomas: Yeah exactly yeah okay So you're teaching a class, hypothetical with that involved, for some reason. I don't, if I'm, I don't, I'm not a school, school person. I don't know what fucking class this would be, but let's say it's going to include a movie that includes a violent sexual assault. You, Stormy Decisus, Dr. Stormy Decisus, how are you handling that for your class? Are you just telling people?

0:57:00 Alan: So, I actually have done this. There's there's a film I really like that shows a goes out to a bar and she's drinking heavily, and a man picks her up at the bar and takes her back to his apartment, and the film just cuts off. She's lying semi-conscious on his bed, and he unzips her skirt, and obviously the heavy implication that he rapes her. And then the film rewinds and it shows how each of the other people she interacted with that night could have intervened. And the message of the film is teaching people how to, you know, you see a sober, sober man, you know, dancing with a drunk girl, you might walk up and be like, hey, you having a good time tonight?

0:57:08 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah,

0:57:45 Alan: How are you doing? You know, you might, and so the whole point is to teach people those bystander intervention behaviors. It's a great video. I use it. It has that extremely evocative image of this, you unconscious woman being undressed. Tell my students, I do give them a a trigger warning because for one thing, there are definitely going to be people in that class who will have that panic attack.

0:57:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

0:58:07 Alan: And I if they have another class next and this is not vital content?

0:58:09 Thomas: Yeah. You You mean it's not your job to give them exposure therapy in that moment as a professor? Cause ideas need to challenge them.

0:58:15 Alan: Right. Right. Yeah. So it's none of that. Also I don't want to humiliate them. Maybe they don't want to have a panic attack in front of the 30 of their peers, so I, I have actually shown it in class, and what I do is, um, I, it, at the end of class, and the times when I've shown it, I tell people the class before, and then I tell them the day of, I have, it's going to be the last thing in class, if you'd like to leave early, just go ahead, and nobody, not going to make any assumptions about why, maybe you're busy, maybe you just want to get Starbucks, maybe this reminds you of something that happened to a friend of, of yours, doesn't mean it ever happened to you, and so I give a bunch of possible reasons so that we don't all conclude like, oh, the people who are leaving have experienced sexual assault.

And I also tell people the day before so that if you don't want to be the one walking out of class, you don't have to, and I also say that, like, if you put your head down, I'm not gonna judge you, because the, the particularly evocative moment is, it's just a visual, so

0:58:21 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, right. Sure. Sure, yeah, yeah.

0:59:10 Alan: I, I give people all of those outs, um, I have still shown that video because I think the, and the particular it it demonstrates this bystander information. So, well, I think that's important, though, when you think about trigger warnings, is if, like, I was teaching a math class, and so a really common calculus problem is, um, like, if there's something dripping and it's making a circle, how fast is the circle growing? Um, absolutely no reason for me to make the dripping thing blood, right? It can be paint, it can be water, it can be maple syrup, it doesn't need to be blood. So if I was going to have a whole class where I was going to be like, and then the zombie bites their arm off, and how much

0:59:17 Thomas: Well yeah that's that's not the question. Yeah yeah yeah.

0:59:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:59:46 Alan: Does it weigh and stuff, then I guess I would give a fuck ton of warnings because there's no fucking point to that. If it's something that is, you know, I think has a good pedagogical purpose, in that case, I did give a fairly intensive warning for a class where it's gonna come up a lot, and so to avoid it, like, for that one video, if they skip that video, it doesn't affect their performance in the class really, but it would affect the whole class. Then I tell people up front, like, I give them a sort of a rundown of what's gonna be there, and I say, like, decide if this is a class for you.

1:00:15 Thomas: So? Just, Yeah. Exactly.

1:00:16 Alan: I,

1:00:16 Thomas: But, so, I'm just trying to get to that question of, knowing what you know about the trigger warnings, or even, or a content note, and I still don't know if there's like a distinction there, if it matters, but, um, still using them, right, all, and I feel like that makes sense to me, like the way you're handling that particular movie in that class makes perfect sense to me, I mean, it sounds like for you then the, the benefits are outweighing any costs that might come from that.

1:00:39 Alan: Still definitely use it for things that are highly likely to trigger those panic attacks, I say that, I don't usually use them for things that have a very low probability of, for example, in, in one class I have, um, cartoon image of a dog biting a man, if I warn people right ahead, like, okay, I'm going to show you this cartoon, there might actually be some negative effects to that warning, um, got to tell you, I haven't actually thought about whether to give a warning for that. I didn't actually, prior to just this moment, decide not to. I just never did. For something like that, you know, a cartoon image of a dog biting a man, that's something where adding that warning, I don't know if the benefits outweigh the harms.

1:01:10 Thomas: That. Yeah.

1:01:21 Alan: I really Don't. I think at some point it's a philosophical question. I think what research there is, is particularly on any potential harms, is still very, very preliminary. So, for the moment, I genuinely don't know. Fuck.

1:01:21 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

1:01:35 Thomas: And add to that the fact that if you reduce the threshold of thing you're going to warn about, there's going to be so many things you maybe aren't even thinking about that's like, oh, now I got to warn about not just this, but this and this and this, and naturally, I think that also is part of why it's not super feasible. And I think I think finding that line of like, how intense does something need to be to use a content or trigger warning, I think is, you know, that's going to be an art that's gonna be, you a judgment call, but certainly lowering it over much does seem like it very quickly defeat the purpose. And like you say, maybe even have some of these negative effects, if you're worrying about each and every possible little thing. So that's, that's interesting. Are there any final conclusions you want to put on this before we call it?

1:02:20 Alan: Fire. I mean, I still think these, these, these anti -trigger warning people are mostly assholes. Um, yeah, it is, it is somewhat more nuanced than than "fuck those guys," unfortunately.

1:02:29 Thomas: Sure. All right. Well, you usually give us something to do. Are we just re-upping the little libraries or do you have another project for us?

1:02:29 Alan: Yeah. So, still working on the little libraries, and I'm definitely still looking for people to place books. So there's a link on sharebandbooks.com, that's B-A-N-N-E-D, sharebandbooks.com, um, for you to sign up to place books, as well as a link for you to donate books. Uh, that's still my, my project for the foreseeable Future.

1:02:56 Thomas: Excellent. Yeah. So cool. And again, thanks so much to the listeners who have made that happen. To make a real difference in some people's lives, I think. So that's such a cool project. And Alan Smirbeck Stormy Decisus to your friends, thanks, ooh ooh, I gotta remind people you'll be on for Good Will Hunting for the Seriously Awful movies, we haven't recorded, we have that scheduled, I'm super excited for it, so people should pledge to patreon.com/seriouspod, catch Stormy on that, it's gonna be a ton of fun

1:02:57 Alan: Oh.