Guilt.

Robert H. Frank discusses one of the reasons why emotions are so crucial, that’s because they pull us in precisely the opposite direction of our immediate pleasures. For example, Love for our partner pulls us away from acting on our potential attraction to someone else. It makes sure we reap the benefits of a long term companionship over immediate desires.

Similarly, Guilt and Shame may have developed as a means of generating a sense of restraint within an individual for the early humans, so as to downplay immediate aggression within groups, thus sustaining the community while still being fierce to fend threats coming from the outside. Thus Guilt and related emotions would have been key to keeping the clans together from the impulses to destroy themselves, talks Peter Breggin.

Focusing on Guilt specifically, it is first crucial to differentiate it from shame as both of them do seem similar and are often used interchangeably. Guilt is an evaluation of the action or lack thereof while shame is an evaluation of the self in general. Shame conveys “I am awful” while Guilt conveys “what I did or didn’t do was awful”. Shame can more often result from external social norms whereas Guilt usually comes from internalized moral standards formed by the individual.

Effects of guilt can be very positive for a relationship as, if one has wronged someone, their internalized guilt urges them to take reparative actions such as apologizing, towards the relationship as a means of conveying that the relationship is valuable. Thus guilt is perceived as being pro-social. At the same time, the anticipation of guilt as in “if I do that, I will feel guilty” is a powerful deterrence from any act deemed wrongful.

Guilt is ever present in our culture, ranging from huge issues like climate change and poverty to even something like an unintended reactionary immoral thought that suddenly pops in your head.  We feel responsible and guilt arises from our inaction or in the latter case, “how could I think something like that?”, and it never stops. No amount of action is enough as we can always give more, always do more, and always be better than what we are.

In an article by Michael J. Deem & Grant Ramsey (2016), they ask whether guilt is good for the individual or good for the group. For example, altruism is a trait that doesn’t seem very advantageous for an individual but it is so for a group to have altruistic individuals within them. That is, a group with a high number of altruistic individuals would be more successful than a group without.

The answer could lie in the emergence of guilt, or precisely when it emerged. If guilt arose in very early stages, before the emergence of complex cognitive abilities like the idea of one’s place within the community, then a bad reputation wouldn’t be a problem for the individuals. In this case, individuals could take advantage of others without any fear of affecting their reputation within the community and thus guilt would have only been a hindrance on an individual level. In this case, guilt would be selected on a group level as groups with more guilt prone individuals would flourish while the groups without such individuals would not. Whereas, if guilt arose after said complex cognitive abilities emerged, then it’s possible that it was selected on an individual level as status and one’s place within a community would now be important for an individual.

Guilt is often referred to as a moral emotion due to, among other things, its pro-social outcomes, but even a moral emotion does have a dark side to it, as conveyed in a paper by de Hooge et al (2011) where they found that, in an interaction between two individuals where one has wronged the other, any reparative action at a personal cost would be considered as a way to make amends. However, in an interaction involving only 2 individuals, there is no other choice but to amend at one’s own expense. This, however, is not the case when there are more than two people involved.

In a paper titled What Is Moral about Guilt? Acting ” Prosocially” at the Disadvantage of Others by de Hooge et al (2011), they performed a series of dictator games involving three people, where one of them has the responsibility to distribute resources (money, time etc.) between the victim (the one who has been wronged) and a non-victim. In all the experiments, the participant offered more to the victim but at the expense of the non-victim and without changing his own share.

This shows that guilt can result in momentary preoccupation with the victim along with an overlook towards other people but not at the expense of oneself. There is also no attempt to repair this neglect towards the non-victim, showing that there is no secondary guilt involved towards the non-victim, thus stopping the possibility of an ever growing cycle of compensation and expense.

Now, moving on to Philosopher Gilbert Harman who conveys in Guilt Free Morality, that it’s possible to be moral without having a sense of internal agony resulting from guilt, largely through empathy and respect for a moral principle or simply the anticipation of guilt.

At the same time, guilt prone-ness can motivate behavior change to a high degree as people who are high guilt prone feel guilt more intensely and have also shown to have a high likelihood of changing their perspectives when in an interpersonal conflict while doing so on their own accord without being prompted to do so, as studied by Leith and Baumeister (1998).

Personally speaking, my relationship with guilt and related self-conscious emotions (high prone) over my past mistakes has largely defined a lot of how I process myself, shaping me to be more empathetic than what I was before at the same time crippling me slightly with anxiety, due to the slight preoccupation I bring to it.

References:

1. de Hooge, Ilona & Nelissen, Rob & Breugelmans, Seger & Zeelenberg, Marcel. (2011). What Is Moral About Guilt? Acting ” Prosocially” at the Disadvantage of Others. Journal of personality and social psychology. 100. 462-73. 10.1037/a0021459. 
2. The Strange Persistence of Guilt by Wilfred M. McClay, THE HEDGEHOG REVIEW: VOL. 19 NO. 1 (SPRING 2017) 
3. The Evolutionary Puzzle of Guilt: Individual or Group Selection? By Michael J. Deem, Dept of Multidisciplinary Studies, Indiana State University & Grant Ramsey, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Belgium, (2016) Emotion Researcher, ISRE’s Sourcebook for Research on Emotion and Affect. 
4. The Functions of Guilt by Michael R. Ent, Department of Psychology, Towson University & Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Florida State University (2016), Emotion Researcher, ISRE’s Sourcebook for Research on Emotion and Affect. 
5. Harman, Gilbert (2009). Guilt-free morality. _Oxford Studies in Metaethics_ 4:203-14.
6. Haselton, Martie. (2006). Evolutionary Psychology of Emotions–1 Irrational Emotions or Emotional Wisdom? The Evolutionary Psychology of Emotions and Behavior. Hearts and minds: Affective influences on social cognition and behavior. 
7. Frank, R. H. (1988.) Passions within reason: The strategic role of the emotions. New York: Norton.
8. The Psychology of Embarrassment, Shame, and Guilt by Neel Burton M.D., Psychology Today, 
9. Breggin, Peter. (2015). The Biological Evolution of Guilt, Shame and Anxiety A New Theory of Negative Legacy Emotions. Medical Hypotheses. 85. 10.1016/j.mehy.2015.03.015.
10. Leith, K.P. & Baumeister, Roy. (1998). Empathy, Shame, Guilt, and Narratives of Interpersonal Conflicts: Guilt-Prone People Are Better at Perspective Taking. Journal of Personality. 66. 1-37.