Psychological Response Data on the Traumatic Nature of 600 Written Events

We present a dataset containing participants’ ratings (n = 250) of 600 written descriptions of events ranging from benign (‘witnessed a leaf falling from a tree’) to potentially distressing and/or injurious (‘was stabbed by a close friend’). Participants were randomly assigned to rate a subset of events on a 7-point Likert scale from “Not at all traumatic” to “Extremely traumatic”. Participants were also assessed in terms of demographic characteristics (gender, race, ethnicity, previous trauma exposure, psychiatric diagnosis, religiosity, political orientation, age). The data are suitable for various purposes, including as stimuli for experimental paradigms or for descriptive analysis.