Guilt Conscience: Why Do We Feel Guilt & Shame?

or speak of both as if they were a single feeling. Even in science, for a surprisingly long time people didn’t bother to take the differences seriously.

They have developed a simple and helpful formula for the difference between shame and guilt.

When it comes to guilt, the focus is on behavior. According to the motto: “I did something bad. I made a mistake. I hurt someone.” With shame, the focus shifts to the self. Those who feel shame think, “I’m bad. I’m flawed. There’s something wrong with me.”

Many people believe that shame is morally valuable. They think, “I’m a good person because I’m ashamed.” How do you answer that?

Well, I have to admit: This is an idea that has had a big impact on me personally.

To what extent?

I grew up in a Catholic environment – extremely strict, with a very punitive God. I was read many stories of saints as a child. But at the age of six or seven I realized: I would never become a saint. Because like every child, I misbehaved sometimes. But then I thought: Jesus suffered a lot; I guess that means: If I want to be a good person, I should feel as bad as possible. My own research really opened my eyes. I saw: This constant suffering really doesn’t do anything for us.

Do people feel more shame if they have experienced a Catholic upbringing of this kind?

I was pretty sure that was the case and I did a lot of research on it. To my surprise, I found no evidence of this. Religious affiliation reveals next to nothing about how much shame or guilt a person feels.

You’ve done a lot of work on how much a person is prone to shame or guilt. If it’s not due to religion – perhaps the differences come from upbringing?

I researched this with fifth-grade children, their parents and grandparents. I wanted to know whether our tendency to feel shame and guilt is passed down through generations. And I would have bet my house that we would find something, especially when it comes to mothers and grandmothers. But we haven’t discovered any clear evidence of this. The only thing that reveals anything is the children’s perspective. Some are very sensitive to signs of parental rejection.

Does that mean the children feel rejected even though their parents didn’t mean it that way?

Children and parents live in very different worlds. If you ask the parents: “What do you actually do when it comes to raising children?” and then ask the children, the similarities between these stories are negligible. You might think that some children are particularly sensitive from birth and therefore develop more shame later on. But no strong evidence of this has been seen in research either. I am now 67 years old. Where the tendency to shame comes from is a research question for the next generation.

Speaking of which: Are older people more ashamed?

On the contrary. That’s one of the benefits of getting older. We interviewed very old people, some of whom were over 90. Many of them said: Do I judge myself? I don’t have time for this anymore! Sure, they may feel guilt or remorse, but hardly any shame.

When you talk about the difference between shame and guilt, how easy is it for you to sell this story to others?

This is very easy. People say, “I hear that your shame is causing you a lot of suffering. That sounds really harsh. But there is an alternative to it that is better, that is more moral, that is healthier, that hurts less. Do you want to know more about it?”

Understand. In my experience, many people don’t use the word “shame” the way you defined it.

That may be so. When I was still working as a therapist, I encountered this occasionally. I never bothered with that. I don’t care about the word. Even in the questionnaires that I use to measure shame and guilt, the terms “shame” and “guilt” do not appear at all.

Rather?

When it comes to shame, I ask: Do you feel like you’re a bad person after doing this or that? Everyone understands that.

When I look at the research on shame and guilt, I think: Freud was pretty right about his concept of the superego.

Freud was right about many things. Not in everything, of course. But it’s true: we have an inner sense of what is right and wrong. This inner voice motivates us to do the right thing. This is the case for the vast majority of people. Not for everyone. A small percentage will always take advantage of other people.

Are there forms of bad conscience that you have overlooked in your research?

As a researcher, I have tended to focus on situations in which people have made objective errors. Guilt almost always turns out to be a helpful emotion. But I admit: There are also forms of guilt that are not so good for us. Think about the phenomenon of survivor guilt. You feel guilty for surviving. It was just luck, just coincidence. You didn’t do anything wrong.

How can you help friends who have developed such survivor’s guilt?

Many sufferers believe that life is a zero-sum game. According to the motto: My survival harmed another person. Or after an accident that was not their fault, they fall into counterfactual thinking: “If only I had taken the other route! If only I had set off a little later!” On the one hand, such thought patterns are completely normal. But on the other hand, they make you feel responsibility where you have no responsibility. I would question such thoughts in conversations.