Trauma-specific Reactions to Sexual Assault Content in College Students: Considerations for Content Warnings

Abstract

Abstract Much of the debate on content warnings has occurred with little empirical data to inform it. In the past five years this has started to change and in this most recent study, 185 students completed trauma surveys and a PTSD checklist and then read a passage that detailed a nonfiction account of a sexual assault of a female undergraduate. Participants were sent a follow up assessment 2 weeks later. Similar to previous studies, the majority of participants (94%), including those with a sexual assault history, read the passage even when offered an alternate reading with no traumatic content. In addition, those with a sexual assault history did not report an increase in PTSD symptoms in the following 2 weeks. However, unlike the two previous studies, those with a sexual assault history reported more distress right before and just after the reading. They also reported being more emotional during the study. This discrepancy in the findings is likely due to the use of a non-fictional account and the use of the more specific Sexual Experiences Survey (SES-SFR: Koss et al., 2007) to operationalize sexual assault. This suggests that student emotional responses to potentially triggering material are likely to vary depending on the type of trauma and the nature of the content presented.