Adequately Reserved

On Guilt August 24, 2009

I don’t remember where I read it, but I didn’t make it up: The difference between guilt and shame is that you can brag about feeling guilty, but you can’t brag about feeling ashamed.

Give that thought a little time to dissolve throughout your mind. It’s a resilient meme. Now that I’ve read it, when I hear anybody say, “I feel guilty,” “I feel bad,” I’m just unable to believe them. What I hear instead is what I think is the actual message: “I have done something that, despite my wishes and efforts, will no longer be secret, and I am worried that this information will damage my standing in my social networks. It is very important to me that you believe this behavior is atypical!” Guilt, in this scenario, is simply a special case of fear resulting from the possibility of high-status people discovering a lie you’ve told them. As the penalty grows greater and more likely, you harbor a greater feeling of guilt.

This as opposed to shame, which is a feeling that results from doing a behavior that is usually used for classifying someone as low-status. For example, suppose I’m at a party at a friend’s house, and I break his television. I’m now low-status. I’m ashamed. I feel a strong urge to replace it, to replace my social status, to convince my friend I’m not a net liability to his life.

This is an important insight. Guilt incites us not to right the wrong, but to spread our version of the wrong through our social networks. Shame incites us to right the wrong, and to keep the wrong a secret.

Needs to be more pithy? Here: Guilt incites justification; shame incites rectification.