One morning I awoke to a text I had left myself with an idea for board game. The text read: Pitch it, a board game where you pick words from a pot and have to create a pitch for a product. I guess I must have fallen asleep watching Mad Men.
I got the idea to write about guilt while stopped at a traffic light. Tucked into the pocket of the passenger side door was an unopened letter from the War Amps (the letter that arrives every year with key tags inside), and I felt this surge of guilt because here is this great organization, doing this amazing thing and I have never even bothered to open their letters, let alone make a donation.
And then I got to thinking about all the other things I feel guilty about: How I feel guilty for not liking the music of Mumford and Sons, because they seem like really nice guys; and how I feel guilty when, security pass in hand, I walk extra fast to the door at work in order to avoid that awkward debate of whether or not to hold the door open for the person behind me who I don’t recognize. Do they think I think they look suspicious?
And shame, well, shame is tricky. There's shame like that addressed in the Steve McQueen film; and then there's my kind of shame, like that time I panicked and used a child as shield to protect myself from a hawk that was flying directly at my head.
The hawk incident aside, most of the shameful things I've done in my life were done when I was too young and immature to realize the full consequences of my actions; that doesn't lessen their shamefulness, and to this day I look back and cringe and offer silent apologies and wonder why the hell I didn't know better.
But I know better now, and I guess that’s something; heck, maybe that’s even the point, maybe we have to experience episodes of shame when we are young in order to avoid an escalation of hurtful, ridiculous or inappropriate behaviors down the road.
And conscience, yup, I'm fairly certain I have one of those. One memory that has always stuck with me from childhood is something my dad said after we had finished watching Pinocchio: "That's not true what he said, you shouldn't always let your conscience be your guide."
Though my dad never explained what he meant, left me to ruminate as was his way, my best guess at his meaning is that we should always leave the window open to reason.
And so I sat at the traffic light, and then inched forward to the next traffic light and as I did, my thoughts on the subject of guilt shifted to thoughts on the subject of shame and then conscience, and well, here we are.
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GUILT and SHAME sometimes go hand in hand; the same action may give rise to feelings of both shame and guilt, where the former reflects how we feel about ourselves and the latter involves an awareness that our actions have injured someone else. [9]
According to psychoanalyst
Helen B. Lewis: [12][13]
"The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus."
GUILT & SHAME AS DETERRENTS OF IMMORAL OR ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR [28]
Within three years of
being released from jail, two out of every three inmates in the US are back behind bars.
As described in the 2014 paper, Two Faces of Shame:
The Roles of Shame and Guilt in Predicting Recidivism, researchers interviewed over 470 inmates soon after they were
incarcerated, asking them about their feelings of guilt, shame, and if they
accepted responsibility for their actions or instead blamed others. About 70% of the
inmates were then re-interviewed a year after their release to determine if
they had since re-offended.
- Researchers found that the study participants inclined toward feelings of guilt were less likely to re-offend.
- Study participants who felt shame and blamed others for their actions, were more likely to re-offend.
- Those who felt shame but who didn't deny responsibility by blaming others were also less likely to re-offend.
- According to the study's authors, these finding suggests that:
“The pain of shame may have two faces—one with destructive potential and the other with constructive potential.”
SHAME
The Taboo on Shame [24]
Sociologist Norbert Elias proposed that there is a difference between shame that is felt, the
basis of morality, and shame that we keep hidden from others and even ourselves. After studying cultural etiquette for several decades, Elias determined that:
- As physical punishment decreased, shame became dominant as the main agent of morality.
- As shame became more prevalent, it also went underground, becoming virtually invisible.
Elias interpreted this invisibility in terms of taboo: In modernization, shame becomes a topic that is
not to be discussed for fear of exclusion and ridicule.
Clinical psychologist Gershen Kaufman on shame: [12][14]
"In the context of normal development, shame is the source of low self-esteem, diminished self image, poor self concept, and deficient body-image. Shame itself produces self-doubt and disrupts both security and confidence. It can become an impediment to the experience of belonging and to shared intimacy."
"It is the experiential ground from which conscience and identity inevitably evolve. In the context of pathological development, shame is central to the emergence of alienation, loneliness, inferiority and perfectionism. It plays a central role in many psychological disorders as well, including depression, paranoia, addiction, and borderline conditions. Sexual disorders and many eating disorders are largely disorders of shame. Both physical abuse and sexual abuse also significantly involve shame."
"We have seen that in all parts of the world persons who feel shame for some moral delinquency, are apt to avert, bend down, or hide their faces, independently of any thought about their personal appearance." [3][4a]
"And as the face is the part of the body which is most regarded, it is intelligible that any one ashamed of his personal appearance would desire to conceal this part of his body. The habit, having been thus acquired, would naturally be carried on when shame from strictly moral causes was felt; and it is not easy otherwise to see why under these circumstances there should be a desire to hide the face more than any other part of the body." [3][4a]
"With respect to blushing from strictly moral causes, we meet with the same fundamental principle as before, namely, regard for the opinion of others. It is not the conscience which raises a blush, for a man may sincerely regret some slight fault committed in solitude, or he may suffer the deepest remorse for an undetected crime, but he will not blush.... It is not the sense of guilt, but the thought that others think or know us to be guilty which crimsons the face." [3][4b]
"This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it later, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-fantasy of the childhood of the individual." [7][8]
In Basket of Bread: Rather Death than
Shame, Salvador Dali paints a portentous depiction of the ultimate demise
of Adolf Hitler—who chose death rather than the inevitable shame of capture—as
a heel of bread, in a basket situated precariously on the edge of an uncovered
table, against a starkly black backdrop. [1][2]
GUILT
The Five Basic Forms of
Guilt [10][11]
- Guilt for something you did.
- Guilt for something you didn't do, but want to.
- Guilt for something you think you did.
- Guilt that you didn't do enough to help someone.
- Guilt that you’re doing better than someone else.
Though some individuals may be able to deal with their feelings of guilt directly, in others, feelings of guilt may lead to self-harming behaviors, may cause people to adopt defensive personality traits, or to project their negative feelings onto others. [15-20]
Lack of Guilt in People With Psychopathy [15][21]
- Individuals high in psychopathy lack any true sense of guilt or remorse for harm they may have caused others. Instead, they rationalize their behavior, blame someone else, or deny it outright.
- To a person high in psychopathy, their actions can always be rationalized to be the fault of another person.
- This is seen by psychologists as part of an inability to evaluate situations in a moral framework, and an inability to develop emotional bonds with other people due to a lack of empathy.
Sigmund
Freud on Guilt
"Since civilization obeys an internal erotic impulsion which causes human beings to unite in a closely knit group, it can only achieve this aim through an ever-increasing reinforcement of the sense of guilt." [3][6]
Evolutionary Theories on the Origins of Guilt
 |
| RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM |
Some evolutionary psychologists theorize that guilt and shame helped maintain beneficial relationships, such as reciprocal altruism. [15][23]
If an individual feels guilty when they fail to reciprocate a kindness or when their actions or words harm another person, that individual is more
likely not to become too selfish or harm others.
In this way, they reduce the chances of retaliation and thereby increase their own survival prospects, as well as those of the group.
In this way, they reduce the chances of retaliation and thereby increase their own survival prospects, as well as those of the group.
- If someone causes harm to another, and then feels guilt and demonstrates regret and sorrow, the person harmed is more likely to forgive. Thus, guilt makes forgiveness possible, and helps hold the social group together.
Guilt & Religion
Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and from the University of Notre Dame examined the concept of Catholic guilt among U.S. teenagers (2008). [27]
The study found:
- No evidence that Catholic teenagers experienced more guilt than non-Catholic teenagers.
- No evidence that more observant Catholics felt guiltier than less observant Catholics.
- No difference in the effect of guilt-inducing behaviors on Catholic versus non-Catholic participants.
Guilt is an important factor in perpetuating Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD) symptoms. [49]
- Research is mixed on the connection between religion and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. [12]
In the study, Religiousness and obsessive-compulsive cognitions and symptoms in an Italian population (2001) 165 anonymous individuals completed surveys measuring for OCD, depression and anxiety. Researchers found that religious individuals scored higher on measures of obsessionality, perfectionism, responsibility, control of thoughts and over-importance of thoughts; and that the two latter measures were associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms only in the religious participants, suggesting religion may play a role in the development of obsessive-compulsive type disorders. [26]
The Weight of Guilt [41]
In The Weight of a Guilty Conscience: Subjective Body Weight as an Embodiment of Guilt (2013), researchers found evidence that the emotional experience of guilt can be grounded
in subjective bodily sensation.
- When asked to recall personal unethical acts, study participants reported an increased subjective body weight as compared to recalling ethical acts, unethical acts of others or no recall.
- Ethical deeds were rated just as important as unethical actions, but only unethical led to increased reports of weight.
- This increased sense of weight was found to be related to their heightened feelings of guilt, as opposed to sadness or disgust.
- The authors also tested whether recall of unethical memories would affect perceived effort to complete a variety of helping behaviors.
- Some of these behaviors involved physical effort, such as carrying groceries upstairs for someone, whereas other behaviors did not, such as giving someone spare change.
- Those who recalled unethical memories perceived the physical behaviors to involve even greater effort to complete compared to ratings provided by those in a control condition.
Guilt Proneness
People who are guilt
prone anticipate having negative feelings before they ever commit a moral
transgression. They do not need to have someone looking over their shoulder to
prevent them from committing moral transgressions because their conscience is
their guide. [30]
In a 2012 article in titled, Guilt Proneness and Moral Character, [25] researchers exploring how guilt proneness might influence our behavior, examined existing research and found that people who report higher levels of guilt proneness are less likely to make unethical business decisions, lie for monetary gain, or cheat during negotiations.
- People who are guilt prone are also less likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors, like showing up to work late without permission, stealing office supplies, and being rude to clients, even after taking into account other factors like gender, age, and interpersonal conflict at work.
CONSCIENCE [31]
- In psychological terms, conscience is often described as leading to feelings of remorse when we commit actions that go against our moral values, and to feelings of virtue or integrity when our actions conform to such norms. [32]
- In this view, a requirement of conscience is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person. [33]
Sigmund Freud on
Conscience
- According to Freud’s structural model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role (conscience); and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego. [5]
- Freud regarded conscience as originating psychologically from the growth of civilization, which periodically frustrated the external expression of aggression. [34][35]
- According to Freud, the consequence of not obeying our conscience is guilt, which can be a factor in the development of neurosis. [34][35]
- Freud claimed that both the cultural and individual super-ego set up strict ideal demands with regard to the moral aspects of certain decisions, which when disobeyed can provoke a 'fear of conscience'. [34][35]
Charles Darwin on Conscience [31][36][37]
"Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or as nearly as well developed, as in man."
- Darwin considered that conscience evolved as a result of the biological drives that prompt humans to avoid provoking fear or contempt in others; and that conscience was experienced through the emotions of guilt and shame in differing ways among individuals and societies. [38][39]
- Contemporary scientists in the fields of animal behaviour and evolutionary psychology seek to explain conscience as a function of the brain that evolved to facilitate altruism within societies. [42]
- Numerous case studies of brain damage have shown that damage to areas of the brain (such as the anterior prefrontal cortex) results in the reduction or elimination of inhibitions, with a corresponding radical change in behaviour. [43]
- When the damage occurs to adults, they may still be able to perform moral reasoning; but when it occurs to children, they may never develop that ability. [44][45]
- Attempts have been made by neuroscientists to locate the 'free will' necessary for conscience to overrule impulse by investigating a scientifically measurable 'awareness of an intention to carry out an act' which occurs 350–400 microseconds after the electrical discharge known as the 'readiness potential.' [46][47][48]
***
FIN
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