“Content Warnings Reduce Esthetic Appreciation of Visual Art”, Payton J. Jones, Victoria Bridgland, Benjamin W. Bellet2022-11-17 (culture, psychology)⁠:

“Content warnings” are alerts about upcoming content that might be related to upsetting or traumatic experiences. Such warnings are increasingly used by artists and art curators around the world. Though the psychological literature on content warnings suggests they are typically functionally inert, warnings have not yet been studied in the context of art or esthetics.

In this preregistered, within-persons, randomized-controlled experiment, we showed diverse art pieces to 213 participants (6 trials each). By random assignment, some art was prefaced with a content warning matching its specific content (eg. “content warning: sexual assault” for Gerome’s “Phryne before the Areopagus”).

We found that content warnings decreased esthetic appreciation (Cohen’s d = −0.22, BF = 54, n = 1,278). Content warnings also substantially increased negative emotional responses and decreased positive emotional responses (Cohen’s d = 0.44, BF = 9.6×10⁹, n = 1,278).

Though we planned to test the effect of warnings on “opting out” of viewing art, we were surprised to find that none of the participants avoided viewing any of the art pieces regardless of whether they were prefaced with a warning.

See Also:

• Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories

• Trigger warnings and resilience in college students: A preregistered replication and extension

• Student reactions to traumatic material in literature: Implications for trigger warnings

• Does sexualization in video games cause harm in players? A meta-analytic examination