Examples of Guilt--Part I

This is the first of a six-part series of articles on guilt, emphasizing specific examples, and how to deal with them. Written by a psychologist.

In its most healthy and appropriate sense, guilt is an emotional warning sign that most people learn through their normal childhood social development. Its purpose is to let us know when we’ve done something wrong, to help us develop a better sense of our behavior by being aware of how our behaviors affect ourselves and others. It prompts us to re-examine our values, principles and ideals so that we don’t end up making the same mistake(s) twice. This thinking, as should be obvious by now, has an upside and a downside. Here’s some every-day, down-to-earth “situations,” and then discussions about how to deal with each by creating a third standard, not necessarily accepting the one mandated by the guilt-perpetrator. The response to some of these examples is in subsequent articles, so be sure to read all six in this series. (Also, see the previous articles on ambivalence and guilt, the psychology of guilt and dealing with guilt by this author.)
We speed on the freeway and rationalize the behavior. We tell ourselves, “I’m just keeping up with traffic.” There is ambivalence because we know we are driving faster than the speed limit, but at the same time everyone else is doing it, so it must be OK. This rationalization works to reduce the anxiety in our own minds, until we look in the rear view mirror and see a flashing red light. The cop shows us the number on his radar gun, and “now” we not only acknowledge guilt but also experience it acutely in the form of an admission of wrong doing, often followed by pleading our case to the policeman. We also experience anxiety. We imagine the price of the traffic ticket, think of the inconvenience of attending traffic school and paying higher insurance premiums. If we are lucky, the officer lets us off with a warning and we go our way, vowing not to speed again, or at least until the cop disappears.
Your mother tells you to always wear clean underwear when leaving the house. Why? “Because if you get into an accident and are taken to the hospital, the doctors will think you are a slob.” Ambivalence occurs because you know the doctor might think this but you also don’t want to give in to your mother’s demand. So, you don’t change your underwear just to spite your mom, but you drive extra carefully that day.
Your husband treated you badly, ignored you and thought only of himself for years. You had an affair because you no longer could stand the neglect and because you were angry to the core. You didn’t tell anyone and never got caught. Yet, you felt guilt, even though at deeper levels you justified your behavior. You had needs and they went unmet way too long, and even though your needs were legitimate, your behavior gave you “pause” (hence the ambivalence).
Your doctor said to stop eating fatty foods and to lose weight. That night, you are out with your best friends, celebrating graduating from college. The menu arrives and there are lots of yummy choices, plus a few calorie-restrictive ones (that taste like cardboard). You may feel guilty tomorrow, but not tonight. Will power is overruled by other powers. You know the correct thing to do (THE standard) because somewhere in the back of your mind are your doctor’s words. Yet, you order steak and lobster, butter, sour cream, chives, and a cheesecake chaser. (There were a few side vegetables somewhere on that plate, weren’t there?) Yum.
You got an “A minus,” not an “A” on your term paper, because you used a few incorrect forms of words. You beat yourself up. “Why didn’t I see that ‘their’ and ‘there’ are not the same? And, I used ‘to’ instead of ‘too.’ I wasn’t perfect and I ‘should’ have known better.” Ambivalence in this case might stem from knowing THE standard but also not caring sufficiently to use the right words at the time because of competing interests, or just laziness.
-Dr. Griggs
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The Literature on Guilt—Part IV

This is the fourth in a four-part series of articles on the literature on guilt. Please read the first three before reading this one.

To continue…

Clinical Aspects

On a more clinical level, guilt has many correlates with mental illnesses. Anxiety is associated with major depression in about seventy-five percent of cases, and guilt, being a form of anxiety, often is how anxiety presents. In these “biological” or endogenous cases, guilt is a secondary symptom of a primary mental illness. While there may be many guilt-like phenomena (negative thinking, self-deprecating comments), these generally improve when the depression is lifted. In these cases the treatment is not primarily to reduce guilt; rather, to lift the depression, often using medication, cognitive behavior therapy or a combination of both. When the depression resolves, guilt usually subsides.
Major depression is not the only mental illness associated with guilt. Guilt can co-exist with bipolar disorder, addictions, poor self esteem and primary anxiety disorders such as panic attack, phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Guilt is often associated with difficult life decisions that may precipitate more minor forms of mental illness, like initiating a divorce or moving a family to accommodate a better job. These latter cases are referred to as Adjustment Disorders—normal though potentially life stressing events.
There also is the absence of guilt, which is not normally considered in ebooks on guilt. This condition is thought to be found in psychopaths, who in common parlance lack any true sense of guilt or remorse for harm they may have caused others. Instead, they rationalize their behavior, blame someone else, or outright deny their behavior or its consequences.

“I don't feel guilt. Whatever I wish to do, I do.”--Jeanne Moreau

This is seen by psychologists as a failure to develop moral reasoning, an inability to evaluate situations in a moral framework, and an inability to develop empathy and to subsequently emotionally bond with other people. However, there is a rival theory of psychopathy in the developmental literature. My early training in this area suggested that antisocial personalities (the new name for psychopaths) actually are quite sensitive to other’s feelings; in fact, they may be so sensitive they cannot integrate their feelings into their also equally poorly formed ego-identity. This overload “causes” psychopaths to act selfishly in defense of their fragility, violating the rights of others in the service of self-preservation. This implies the sociopath also suffers from underlying narcissism. Regardless, on the surface, antisocial personalities are to be avoided because surely they will take advantage of someone. They will not appear to be impacted, i.e., to feel guilt.
-Dr. Griggs
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The Literature on Guilt—Part III

This is the third in a four-part series of articles on the literature on guilt. Please read the first two articles before reading this one.

To continue…

In this case Shame is to Guilt what Sociology is to Psychology; that is, the bigger, more social version of the smaller individual experience. Shame also suggests moral decrepitude whereas guilt suggests either error in judgment or some form of misdeed. The latter also highlights etiquette over ethics, i.e., focusing on behavior rather than principle, though in reality, it may impossible to totally separate the two. Shame seems to use poor self-esteem to amplify the effect of guilt. Others emphasize social feedback as one crucial factor in differentiating guilt and shame. Here is a quote from someone who sees the distinction in another light, altogether.

“Shame is closely related to guilt, but there is a key qualitative difference. No audience is needed for feelings of guilt, no one else need know, for the guilty person is his own judge. Not so for shame. The humiliation of shame requires disapproval or ridicule by others. If no one ever learns of a misdeed there will be no shame, but there still might be guilt. Of course, there may be both. The distinction between shame and guilt is very important, since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. The wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession, but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it.”--Paul Ekman

Guilt can result from errors committed by normal or healthy people; whereas, shame results from personal or group intrapersonal deficit, possibly also because of a faulty act, but not necessarily. For example, original sin is the result of birth status, not deed. However, there can be shame just as much in individuals. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous will frequently tout shame as their core personality experience when attending “AA” meetings. They frequently talk of always recovering, never being recovered because they are internally flawed, in this case by “character defects.” This is shame experienced individually, even though brought to the surface by a group. In short, shame seems to add the dimension of personal grieving for the loss of a bigger, deeper ideal (flaws in the sense of self or integration of aspects of self); whereas, guilt usually is more specific to action, not state (but again, not always).
Additionally, the social consequences of "getting caught" are seen as more important than the individual feelings or experiences of the agent. The Latin word for guilt is culpa, a word sometimes seen in law literature, for instance in mea culpa meaning "my fault (guilt)," again, referring to the smaller, not the larger experience.

Lastly, an individual has to believe the actions caused by the ingroup were unjustifiable, indefensible and unforgivable. If an individual can justify the actions of the ingroup, this will lessen collective guilt. Only when an individual views the ingroup actions as reprehensible will that individual feel collective guilt.

“Where all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.”--Hanna Arendt

Collective guilt is not only a result of feeling empathy for the outgroup, it can also be caused by self-conscious emotion that stems from questioning of the morality of the ingroup. The opposite is also true. If the actions of the ingroup are just, particularly if paired with equally reprehensible actions of the outgroup, then no collective guilt occurs, despite the possibly egregious acts the former perpetrates upon the latter. Witness the actions of so many righteous “warriors of religion” during the four, maybe five Crusades (depending upon which source is consulted). And, don’t forget what the Nazis did during the Holocaust, etc. (An indirect term sometimes used to express guilt is “denazification;” meaning, to rid the influence of the Nazis.) In each case thousands, even millions of lives were lost in the name of some higher value “exclusively owned” by the perpetrators.
-Dr. Griggs
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The Literature on Guilt--Part II

This is the second of a four-part series or articles on the literature on guilt. Please read the first article before reading this one.

To continue…

Social Processes

Guilt often is assigned by social processes, such as a jury trial. In this case, it is more of a legal concept. Thus, the rulings of a jury that O.J. Simpson or Julius Rosenberg were "guilty" or "not innocent" are taken as an actual judgment by society. Accordingly, we then have to act against the condemned. Conversely, the rulings that such people are "not guilty" may not be so easily accepted, due to the asymmetry in the assumption that one is assumed innocent until proven guilty. In this case the judicial system prefers to take the risk of freeing a guilty party over convicting innocents.
Others, particularly those in the philosophical or religious camps, believe the origin of guilt comes from violating universal principles of right and wrong. In most instances, people who believe this also acknowledge that even though there is proper guilt from doing 'wrong' instead of doing 'right,' people endure all sorts of guilty feelings which do not stem from violating universal moral principles. Again, we see this in the legal arena. If a criminal shows guilt and remorse, he is said to have learned his lesson, and likely will receive a reduced sentence in court. This is especially true if the crime is “understandable;” for example, stealing food because of hunger. This latter example illustrates how empathy mitigates our tendency to punish the guilty. Lastly, empathy in the convicted theoretically reduces the likelihood that the guilty will re-offend.
Academia intellectualizes traditional or social process guilt and calls it other names, such as Collective Guilt or Collective Responsibility. Collective guilt is the unpleasant emotional reaction that results among a group of individuals when it is perceived that the group illegitimately harmed members of another group. It is often the result of sharing a social identity with others whose actions represent a threat to the positive polarity of that identity. Different intergroup inequalities can result in collective guilt, such as receiving unearned benefits and privileges or inflicting more extreme forms of harm on an outgroup (including genocide). Individuals are generally motivated to avoid collective guilt in order to maintain a positive social identity. There are many ways of decreasing collective guilt, such as denying harm or justifying actions. This probably functions in religious discrimination by one group to another. But, collective guilt can also lead to positive outcomes, such as promoting intergroup reconciliation and reducing negative attitudes towards the outgroup, especially if the outgroup is perceived as benign.
There are several causes of collective guilt; salient group identity, collective responsibility and perception of unjust ingroup actions. In order for an individual to experience collective guilt, he must identify himself as a part of the ingroup. This produces a perceptual shift from thinking of oneself in terms of “I” and “me” to “us” or “we.” Only when an individual is salient with the ingroup can he or she experience responsibility for the harmful actions of the group, past and present. In addition to ingroup salience, an individual will only feel collective guilt if he or she views the ingroup as responsible for the harmful actions done to the outgroup. For instance, racial inequality in the US can be described as either “black disadvantage” or “white privilege.” When the term “black disadvantage” is used to describe racial inequality, white participants feel less collectively responsible for the harm done to the outgroup, which lessened collective guilt. In comparison, when “white privilege” was used, white participants feel more collectively responsible for the harm done, which increased collective guilt.
One also finds collective guilt manifesting in Traditional or Cultural Guilt, such as found in Japanese, Korean and Ancient Greek societies, which are sometimes said to be "shame-based" rather than "guilt-based.”

“Successful guilt is the bane of society.”--Marguerite Osward

-Dr. Griggs
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The Literature on Guilt—Part I

The following is the first in a four-part series of articles on the literature on guilt. It is written as an introduction to the topic and should be read in order.
In the literature, we find guilt to be the main theme in John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, William Shakespeare's play “Macbeth,” Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Black Cat,” and in many other works. It is a major theme in many works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is an almost universal concern of novelists who explore inner life and secrets.
The literature on guilt, like that on procrastination (see the ebook, Procrastination by this author), is theoretical, abstract and academic. I won’t dwell on too many details, but following are the general areas one can find relating to guilt. To keep it simple, I’ve divided the available information on guilt into loose and somewhat arbitrary categories.

Evolutionary causes

Some evolutionary psychologists theorize that guilt and shame helped maintain beneficial relationships, such as reciprocal altruism. If a person feels guilty when he harms another or fails to reciprocate kindness, he is less likely to harm others or become too selfish. In this way, he reduces the chances of retaliation by members of his tribe, and thereby increases his survival prospects, as well as those of the tribe or group. As with some other emotions, guilt can be manipulated to control or influence others. As a highly social animal living in large groups that are relatively stable, we need ways to deal with conflicts and events in which we inadvertently or purposefully harm others. 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 it possible to forgive, helps hold the social group together and reduces the risk of retaliation through violence.

Neurological causes

Guilt is founded on our neurological system. We call this mechanism, mirror neurons. When we see another carrying out an action, we carry out the action ourselves in neuronal activity, though not in overt action. Their behaviors are replicated in our own nervous system, literally. When we see another person suffering, we can feel their suffering as if it is our own. This constitutes our powerful system of empathy, which motivates us to do something to relieve the suffering of others. If we cannot help another, or fail in our efforts, we experience bad feelings, one of which is guilt.
From the perspective of group selection, groups that are made up of a high percent of co-operators do better than groups with a low percent of co-operators when comparing between-group competition. The down side is that people who are more prone to high levels of empathy in general, or who specifically experience empathy-based guilt likely suffer more anxiety and depression. The upside is that they are also more likely to cooperate and behave altruistically. This is another way guilt-proneness is not always beneficial to the individual, or within-group competition, but highly beneficial in between-group competition. This brings into focus how guilt works in specialized groups.
-Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page202.html

What Terms We Need To Understand When Changing Teen's Behaviors--Part III

Another term is Classical Conditioning. Remember when Pavlov
(the Russian physiologist) rang a bell, and then gave a dog some food
(meat powder), which made the dog salivate? Pavlov did this over and
over with the same dog and pretty soon the dog would salivate just to the
sound of the bell, anticipating the food. Well, I'm not going to do much
of this, because it's hard to get teenagers to sit still long enough to
listen to bells and search for food. But the principle is good and
illustrates that when good or bad reinforcers follow stimuli, the behaviors
increase or decrease, respectively, no matter what the time, place or event.
Telling or showing people what's coming before it occurs is training them to react positively to the anticipated event. As it turns out, it also increases the effectiveness of the reinforcers and their contingencies.
Operant Conditioning is similar to classical conditioning, only it
happens in real life, everywhere, not just in a lab. The difference is that operant conditioning doesn't have some of the obvious signs to alert us that a reward is coming, like in classical conditioning (modeling, or the bell ringing). In real life, while we are "out and about," most of the rewards follow our behaviors, sans forewarning. These behaviors are called operants or responses. In real life, the good things that follow our behaviors increase our behaviors, whereas the bad things that follow our behaviors decrease our behaviors. The difference between Classical and Operant Conditioning is mostly that in the latter, conditioning takes place in an open, usually less structured environment without formal cues preceding the rewards.
From the above, there are, so far, two ways to increase good
behaviors--positive and negative reinforcement. To refresh your memory,
you either "present" a positive reinforcer (reward) after a behavior or you take away a threat of an impending punishment after a behavior. Both increase a behavior. Conventional thinking is that there is only one way to decrease a behavior, and that is to follow it with punishments. Well, that's the traditional thinking.
It turns out there is another way to think about changing behavior, and that is to make a negative behavior become extinct by increasingly positively reinforcing an appropriate positive behavior that is incompatible with the negative behavior. Huh? This means positive reinforcers amp up good behaviors that are then used to make "extinct" negative behaviors, without punishment. You positively focus on behaviors that are the opposite of bad behaviors and reinforce them four times as much. The idea is to use this positive approach a lot more than any negative strategy. Use it enough and the need for punishments sharply decreases and in some cases, disappears. (See other articles by this author for a further discussion of punishments, their place and
consequences.)
--Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page18.html

What Terms We Need To Understand When Changing Teen's Behaviors_Part II

To Review, there are three contingencies of reinforcers; immediacy,
consistency and constancy. These are the aspects of reinforcers that
create change. I've related all of them to increasing positive behaviors
by applying the contingencies to each behavior you want to increase.
The same arrangement works to decrease negative behaviors, if the
contingencies are applied using punishments. Immediacy means applying
punishment after a behavior, right away, not in five minutes. It will
decrease the frequency and intensity of the behavior. Consistency works
on decreasing negative behaviors by following them with a punishment,
in this case every time, not every other time. And, constancy also
applies to punishments, just like immediacy and consistency. You apply
the same kind of punishment each time to decrease behaviors. But at
this point I'm not focusing on punishments--on purpose. Keep reading.
Another term is Shaping. This is when you reward a behavior that
is sort of close to what you want, just not all the way there. If I
want a pigeon to learn to do pirouettes, I'll start by giving it food
when it makes only left turns, which pigeons randomly do. It doesn't
get anything for right turns. Pretty soon, the pigeon is turning just
left and not long after has made a complete turn, or circle to the
left--a pirouette! I shaped it into making a complete turn by rewarding
just one (small) behavior that ultimately led to a complete turn.
I didn't worry about the final behavior--just the little steps that were in the correct direction.
Another term is Extinction. It doesn't mean a species died out.
It simply means a behavior went away. If a behavior stops occurring,
it is said to have become extinct (stopped). This happens all the time.
How many behaviors do you not do anymore? If you are an adult, you
probably no longer stuff things under your mattress (like kids do when
they don't want to take the time to clean up their rooms). If you still
do that, then your spouse is probably the one reading this e-book and will
apply these techniques to you. In the past, did you yell at your friends
but later learn to talk quietly? Good. Yelling became extinct. You want to make extinct some of the behaviors in your teenager or else you wouldn't be reading this article. People grow and change. Old behaviors yield to new ones. You get the idea.
Another term is Modeling. This is when you show off good behaviors,
hoping others will copy you. At the dinner table, you use your silverware
to eat, not your hands. Right? Your teens will (sooner or later) do the same, partly because you do, partly because you praise them after they
finally pick up a fork (positive reinforcer, in this case using shaping).
Another example is driving the speed limit--a good behavior to model,
especially when teenagers first get behind the wheel. Getting a driver's
license later is a good, though it is a delayed positive reinforcement.
A subset of modeling is Cueing. That just means you provide a hint
that something is coming, good or bad, and that usually stops the teen long enough to think first, then behave. You are prompting your teenager that other, better behavior should follow, which resembles modeling. It's just not as formal as modeling. For example, your teen starts to reach for food with his hands (vs. using silverware). You clear your throat loudly while raising your eyebrows and looking at the silverware. He or she gets the idea even though you are not yet eating with silverware (which would be modeling, formally).
--Dr. Griggs
http://www.psychologyproductsandservices.com/page18.html