Along With the Flowers, a Little Guilt Can’t Hurt

Guilt, schmilt.

Who needs it?

Certainly not you, judging from a slew of popular self-help books and movements devoted to self-esteem and feeling good. But, like good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, there is good guilt and bad guilt. During spiritual introspection--including Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and the Catholic sacrament of confession (now called reconciliation)--a little guilt is good for the soul, religious leaders say.

And psychologists say that while we look derisively upon the guilt-tripping friend and the guilt-inducing mother or father, guilt actually can protect and enhance relationships. Sometimes called “the moral emotion,” guilt--pangs of conscience over having wronged someone or behaved immorally--can drive us to live responsibly, to confess transgressions, to apologize, and to repair harm done.

“Sometimes the only way to get people to do good is to occasionally make them feel bad,” says Michael Medved, chief film critic for the New York Post and who discusses moral issues frequently as a radio talk show host in Seattle. “To live in a world without guilt would be like living in the physical world without physical pain. . . . The guilt tells us to get our finger out of the flame before we get burned.”

Religious leaders always have known that guilt is a necessary part of examining one’s conscience and striving to live a more moral life.

“The positive aspect of guilt is the self-realization that I am falling short of where I want to be,” says psychotherapist and Orthodox Rabbi Dov Heller at Aish Hatorah, an L.A. synagogue. “The experience of that gap can promote change . . . unless it turns into a self-flagellation trip.”

Thankfully, self-lashings and horsehair shirts are antiquated practices. Rev. Robert M. Friday, a professor of religion and religious education at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., says the most productive guilt is that which comes from within, rather than from an imposed set of rules and laws.

“Before some of the changes in the church, people brought their lists of sins, which was a very act-centered notion,” Friday says. “Today people are more inclined to talk about the brokenness in their lives and their sense of alienation from those whom they love.”

According to psychological research, relationships may benefit the most from guilt. The spouse who slinks in the door three hours past dinner time without having made a courtesy telephone call may feel a little guilty. This is a good thing.

“You would not want to have a spouse, boss or roommate who didn’t feel guilty,” says Roy F. Baumeister, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who has researched the positive aspects of guilt.

The most common cause of guilt is neglecting or failing someone who cares about you--for instance, not spending enough time with family, children or a boyfriend or girlfriend, Baumeister says.

“This is also the most common way people make each other feel guilty,” he says. “Even though it is unpleasant, it does push you to do better in the relationship.”

People who report feeling guilty about their behavior are more likely to talk about “learning a lesson,” and to apologize and change behavior, Baumeister says. However, he says, guilt-o-meters vary with the individual: The same act doesn’t necessarily produce the same guilt in different people.

Of course, too much guilt is by definition pathological and destructive. “Exaggerated guilt” is characterized by chronic self-blame and obsessive ruminating.

Some people might come from families “where there is chronic unhappiness,” says clinical psychologist Nicholas Nichols in San Rafael, Calif.

“If those people grow up and do well, they may feel unconscious guilt because they are doing better than everyone else in their families. It’s destructive because they can’t enjoy their lives. . . ,” he says.

This is guilt gone bad, asserts June P. Tangney, professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who has studied guilt and shame for 10 years. She hypothesizes that guilt becomes pathological when it is fused with shame.

“With shame, instead of feeling badly about a particular act, you feel badly about yourself,” Tangney says. “ ‘I am a horrible person.’ The tendency is to withdraw, escape or deny the act, rather than apologize or repair the harm that was done.”

In couples when one or the other person feels shame, Tangney says, there are “considerably more” examples of physical aggression (from men and women). “There is more anger. They are less likely to apologize and [more likely] to shift blame.”

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Guilt Trips

Things that make us feel real guilty, slightly less guilty, and so on, in order. (Lying coupled with not exercising? Oh, my!):

1) Neglecting family; failing someone in a relationship; not following through on an obligation.

2) Romantic infidelities.

3) Being mean to someone; neglecting work; general procrastination.

4) Cheating at work or on homework.

5) Benefiting at someone else’s expense; taking advantage of another; having good luck that others don’t have.

6) Betraying confidences; small acts of physical violence (for instance, breaking something when you’re mad); falling off a diet.

7) Lying; not exercising; wasting money.

Source: Studies published in 1994 by Roy F. Baumeister, professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, and colleagues.