Sending Signals: Trigger Warnings and Safe Space Notifications

Trigger warnings and safe space notifications are common in higher education. Although researchers have evaluated these practices as mental health tools, little attention has been paid to the interpersonal signals they send. In this experiment conducted in fall 2024, we examined how trigger warnings and safe space notifications shape students’ perceptions of instructors and the classroom environment. We randomly assigned 738 American undergraduate students to view videos of instructors delivering a brief lecture on trauma, preceded by the instructor providing a trigger warning, a safe space notification, both, or neither. Participants rated the instructor’s epistemic trustworthiness, concern for student well-being, political orientation, and Left-Wing Authoritarianism scale, as well as their own feelings of psychological safety and willingness to discuss controversial topics in the classroom. Analyses using Bayes Factors provided substantial evidence that trigger warnings had no overall impact on students’ perceptions. In contrast, safe space notifications increased students’ feelings of psychological safety and willingness to discuss controversial topics. Safe spaces also increased perceptions of instructors as caring and trustworthy but signaled that instructors were liberal and left-wing authoritarian, including the subscale measuring support for top-down censorship. Implications for the use of trigger warnings and safe spaces in educational contexts are discussed.