Professors who use safe space language seen as more caring—and more authoritarian

A new study suggests that common classroom practices meant to protect students from emotional harm don’t affect all students in the same way—and may send messages instructors don’t intend. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, found that “safe space” notifications, but not trigger warnings, significantly influence how students view their instructors and the learning environment. Students who heard a professor describe the classroom as a safe space rated the instructor as more caring and trustworthy but also saw the professor as more politically liberal and supportive of censorship.

The researchers aimed to move beyond the clinical debate around trigger warnings and safe spaces to explore a different question: how do these messages function as interpersonal signals? While past work has focused on whether these practices reduce anxiety or help trauma survivors, little attention has been paid to what they communicate about an instructor’s values, trustworthiness, or political leanings.

To investigate this, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Flinders University, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and Harvard University designed a study to experimentally test how students interpret these signals in classroom settings.

“Trigger warnings and safe spaces have become increasingly common in educational settings, but we still know very little about how these practices impact students. The goal of our study was to understand what messages instructors send to students by providing these practices in class,” said study author Sam Pratt, PhD student in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The study involved 738 American undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to watch two short video lectures about psychological trauma. In some videos, the instructor began with a trigger warning, a safe space notification, both, or neither. After viewing, students rated the instructor’s trustworthiness, care for student well-being, political orientation, and authoritarian tendencies. They also reported how psychologically safe they would feel in the class and how willing they would be to discuss controversial issues like politics, gender, or religion.

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Trigger warnings—brief statements alerting students to potentially distressing material—had no meaningful effect on how students rated the instructor or the classroom climate. This finding aligns with earlier research showing that trigger warnings do not reliably reduce anxiety or help trauma survivors. Students who saw a trigger warning did not rate the instructor as more trustworthy, competent, caring, or politically extreme compared to those who did not. Nor did trigger warnings change students’ comfort with classroom discussions.

“I was surprised that trigger warnings had no impact at all,” Pratt told PsyPost. “In our sample, roughly 80-90% of students supported using trigger warnings. But when they actually received one, it didn’t make them feel more positively about the instructor or the classroom environment. This suggests a disconnect between public support for trigger warnings and the actual effect they have in the classroom.”

In contrast, safe space notifications had a consistent impact. When instructors told students the classroom was a safe space and encouraged them to disengage if they felt distressed, students perceived the instructor as more benevolent and concerned about their well-being. These students also reported higher psychological safety and more willingness to engage in discussions on sensitive topics like sexual orientation and trans identity.

However, the notifications also influenced students’ political perceptions. Instructors who gave a safe space message were viewed as more liberal and more supportive of top-down censorship, a type of left-wing authoritarianism that includes restricting speech to reduce inequality.

“Safe space notifications made instructors seem more caring and trustworthy, and made students more open to discussing difficult topics,” Pratt said. “But they also signaled that the instructor was more politically liberal and left-wing authoritarian.”

Interestingly, the combination of a trigger warning and a safe space notification reduced the positive effects of the safe space message. When both were given together, students rated the instructor as less caring and less trustworthy than when only the safe space notification was used. This pattern raises questions about how the sequence and combination of these statements might affect how they’re received.

One goal of the study was to understand whether personal characteristics—such as political beliefs, trauma history, or beliefs about speech—change how students interpret these cues. The researchers found that students’ political orientation had little effect. Liberals and conservatives reacted similarly to trigger warnings and safe spaces, despite public debate often framing the issue as partisan.

Instead, a student’s belief about the dangers of speech and their support for censorship were stronger predictors of how they interpreted the messages. Students who believed words could cause lasting psychological harm responded more positively to safe space notifications, while those who rejected that idea viewed the same messages more negatively.

Students with a history of trauma, including those who reported symptoms of posttraumatic stress, did not benefit more from trigger warnings or safe spaces. Even among those whose trauma history directly related to the lecture content, warnings and safe space notifications did not change their perceptions. This adds to a growing body of research questioning whether these practices offer special support to trauma survivors.

“Trigger warnings had no positive impact on students’ perceptions of their instructors or the classroom environment,” Pratt said. “This was true even for students with a history of trauma, the very group that trigger warnings are often intended to help.”

Gender and race also played a role. Female students tended to view instructors as more benevolent when they gave a trigger warning, while male students did not. White and multiracial students perceived instructors who gave safe space messages as more authoritarian, but Black students saw them as less authoritarian. These patterns suggest that the impact of these statements may vary based on a student’s background and how they interpret concepts like safety and authority in the classroom.

The study does have limitations. Participants viewed brief, scripted videos rather than interacting with a real instructor over a semester. While prior research shows people can form meaningful impressions from short exposures, the artificial setting may not capture the full dynamics of a classroom. Additionally, although the researchers tried to balance political perspectives among participants, recruiting conservatives proved more difficult, which may have affected how well the sample represents the broader student population.

Still, the study offers new insight into how classroom practices can unintentionally shape students’ social and political impressions. While trigger warnings continue to be debated, they appear to have little influence on how students judge their instructors. Safe space notifications, in contrast, come with both benefits and trade-offs—fostering trust and dialogue on the one hand, but potentially signaling ideological bias on the other. For educators, these results highlight the importance of considering not just what is said, but how it may be interpreted.

The study, “Sending Signals: Trigger Warnings and Safe Space Notifications,” was authored by Samuel Pratt, Payton J. Jones, Victoria M. E. Bridgland, Benjamin W. Bellet, and Richard J. McNally.