Given the evidence that content warnings result in more harm than help, we have decided to remove content warnings and to implement a different strategy. This is not a decision made with ease. Content warning were initially added with the intent of helping readers decide whether or not they were interested given the material, but research on the topic has shown time and again that the effects have not been as intended.
Recent research by Association for Psychological Science, as reported by Science Daily, has confirmed concerns that content warnings can unintentionally increase anticipatory anxiety, which occurs when readers brace for discomfort before encountering sensitive material. A comprehensive meta-analysis in peer-reviewed Sage Journals found that participants who read content warnings were more anxious before engaging with potentially triggering content, while the warnings did not alleviate distress once the material was consumed. The findings show that warnings may not achieve their intended purpose of helping readers manage their reactions to difficult topics, and might even enhance curiosity, leading to increased engagement rather than avoidance.
The Atlantic has explored similar dynamics in discussions about anxiety, emphasizing that efforts to shield people from distress can inadvertently magnify their fears. By emphasizing avoidance over resilience, such warnings can undermine individuals’ capacity to handle discomfort.
Article after article after article, the data remains the same—the effect isn’t as intended. It’s not giving people a moment to collect themselves before proceeding. It’s leading instead to anticipatory anxiety, and either drawing engagement by those who the warnings were for, or leading to avoidance. Ironic, is it not, that warnings either serve to attract people or to avoidance when the intended purpose was to give a reader a chance to take a breath first, and that even that take-a-breath moment leads to a lot more stress?
What’s more, this isn’t a new revelation. Back in 2018, Harvard released the results of a randomized control experiment that showed these exact same results. Yet they’ve continued to be used. In 2021, the New Yorker covered more documentation showing that these warnings aren’t being shown to do more good than they are harm.
Coming by the British Psychological Association’s report on the “unintended consequences” a few months ago made me stop and think about my own history (Noëlle writing, here), though at the time, no changes were implemented regarding the warnings in these books. I have trauma around gun violence. Frankly, I saw my dad shoot his brains right after he aimed it at me and told me, “I’m gonna shoot you, and I’m gonna shoot your mother.” Ironically, “trigger warning” includes a trigger for those with gun violence trauma. I also have trauma around alcoholism. My mother was incredibly abusive. She pulled the trigger on me thinking the shotgun was loaded. Quite the dubious honor, surviving both parents aiming guns at me… Though I am generally fine and wouldn’t wish to undo the past, I will spare you the details.
(To note: Had that not all happened, I would have ended up down a bath path that would, among other things, mean my daughter wouldn’t be here. I’d go through it all a million times over before changing the past in a way that would eradicate her existence. So I’m glad, in a twisted way, since what happened put me on the path to having her. She’s worth everything.)
Then came the Seven Fishes episode of The Bear. I was warned it would contain a scene involving an alcoholic mother, and I was filled with so much anxiety that I almost stopped watching. Usually I ignore warnings due to how often they end up being for almost nothing, but this one came from my own husband. I watched, and could feel my stress rising, waiting for the moment I’d see my own mother in Carmy’s mother. When the episode was over, and I asked where the big bad scene was that I needed to be warned about. Well, the scene was so mellow compared to my experiences that I didn’t realize when I was watching the scene in question. I was watching and waiting for what didn’t happen. I couldn’t deny the anticipatory stress and the physical effects on my body, not to mention my mind. Had I beed told it was an episode where Bear was home for a family holiday dealing with his alcoholic mother, that would have been fine. I would above known alcoholism would be involved. Telling me warning: alcoholism, be prepared set me up for something that would go far above and beyond what I could otherwise expect. I experienced what’s been dubbed the “nocebo effect,” where “negative expectations cause more negative outcomes.” The intention was good, but the outcome wasn’t intended.
After this, I began talking with various friends of mine about their experiences with content warnings. Almost universally, warnings resulted in them either being glad for the warning and avoiding content entirely, or consuming the content anyway only to find that the material that was the subject of the warning fell so far short of what they were repared for that they were actually disappointed that their stress, as one friend put it, “ended up being for nothing.” She actually threw up from her stress, but really wanted to force herself to confront something that happened. The scene was so mild that she was upset that that was something someone could need a warning for. She said the person who issued that warning must have had a life to safe that they couldn’t understand assault. (I don’t remember the show, but a man leered at a woman in the background, it wasn’t even part of the plot, never saw him again, and that got an assault sexual warning.) She no longer pays attention to warnings at all when they’re applied to scenes so mild that they don’t really apply at all.
Another friend said she’s more likely to skip books and movies with warnings not because of her own triggers (why can’t we have a better word?), but because she now suspects that writers and filmmakers who use then so easily are virtue-signaling to show how sensitive they want everyone to believe they are. When warnings apply to everything, the mean nothing. And I can see this—a sexual assault warning over a background character leering at someone… So much stress, for that?
The others’ experiences were simiar, though these two made the biggest impacts in this decision. I could either follow pop culture belief that we need warnings everywhere, or I could follow the science. I admit to some hemming and hawing still since the cultural belief is rooted in well-intended liberal values, yet following the science, which is a liberal rally cry, is the opposite. I am a liberal—what is a person supposed to do when it’s so split?
While our content warnings were made with the best of intentions—and we were even preparing a comprehensive list of every single page with anything that a content warning even might apply tp—it got harder and harder to deny that the evidence keeps showing that it’s a net negative, that they’re harming more people than they help. They may even actively harm, according to the Association for Psychological Science. While we’re sure that there are some people who feel helped, in light of the evidence that they’re more likely to have a negative effect than a positive one, we’ve decided to listen to science on this one and remove content warnings from these books. To be clear, we will never get behind Colleen Hoover’s way of thinking, which is that it’s no biggie if a writer doesn’t want a reader to have any idea at all about the subject matter in a book. Her method of having blurbs that sound like romcoms on purpose, then have surprise-woman-beatings is absolutely not acceptable. This is deliberately misleading people. If you’re in the mood for a silly romance after a stressful week, and pick up what is sold to you as a silly romance, then you shouldn’t be served a story about abuse or murder or other serious topics.
Instead, we will focus on rewriting blurbs to offer more accurate insights into each book’s themes and tone, and trusting readers to make informed choices based on context, rather than warnings. The new blurb for Shattered Glass: The Starling clearly states that Grace goes to New York as a naïve dreamer who ends under undercover in a brothel and in the middle of a mafia war, with one don selling children, stated in those words. It’s also plainly stated that Grace discovers devastating secrets about her past, in those words, as well as her family having dark secrets. We can either have content warnings, or we can trust our readers to read the blurb and understand that there will be an innocent woman who ends up in a place with sex workers, which will be hard for her, that this is a place where women may not be if they had other choices, that there is someone who does traffics children, and that there will be family drama. We choose to trust our readers, and to write blurbs that give info with some degree of context for readers to use in their decision-making. If a potential reader is still unsure, you are always welcome to contact us and we will glady go over everything you need and to give you all the context you need. If feasible, Noëlle will even make needed redactions in your copy for you with a few words quickly telling what happened.
The decision to make this chance hasn’t been easy, not when our warnings were started with the best of intentions. Some readers may be angry at this change. If a reader reaches out asking for a specific list, we will gladly oblige. But given the overall evidence, this change is beneficial in the end, and should help more than a specific list of warnings.