Speaking of Psychology - What’s the difference between guilt and shame? With June Tangney, PhD

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

People often use the words “guilt” and “shame” interchangeably, but the two emotions affect us in different ways. June Tangney, PhD, of George Mason University, talks about the difference between shame and guilt, what role these emotions play in our mental health and how they affect our behavior, why some people are especially prone to shame or guilt, and what you can do when guilt or shame is harming your mental health – especially when you feel guilty over something that isn’t your fault or that you cannot change. For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of us have no doubt felt the sting of guilt or shame, that uncomfortable sinking feeling when you know that you've done something wrong and the world is judging you for it, or maybe you're judging yourself. But although the words guilt and shame are sometimes used interchangeably, there are two distinct emotions that manifest differently and affect us in different ways. So what is the difference between shame and guilt? What role do these emotions play in our mental health? Are the useful tools of persuasion?

Does trying to guilt or shame someone into changing their behavior usually work? How early in life do these emotions appear? When do children start to feel guilt and shame? Are some people more shame-prone or guilt-prone than others? And how does that affect their lives and choices? If guilt or shame is eating away at you, what can you do to address it? What if you feel guilty over something that isn't your fault or something that you can't change? What can you do then?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. June Tangney, a distinguished university professor in the psychology department at George Mason University. She has spent her career studying how shame and guilt develop and how these emotions affect us. Dr. Tangney is an APA fellow and has authored or edited several books and published dozens of journal articles on shame, guilt, and other moral emotions. Her latest research focuses on shame and guilt in current and formerly incarcerated populations and on developing interventions to help the 11 million people who cycle through U.S. jails each year.

Dr. Tangney, thank you for joining me today. Thank you. It's a delight to be here. Let's start with the most basic question. What is the difference between shame and guilt? How do these emotions differ from each other? In a nutshell, when we feel shame, we feel bad about ourselves. We are fundamentally flawed because we did something. It reflects on who we are as a person.

I'm a bad person for having done that. Guilt, in contrast, focuses on a behavior somewhat separate from the self. You can be a good person but do a bad thing. And so when people feel guilt, they feel typically bad about something that they've done, something specific or not done that they should have done. And are guilt and shame useful tools of persuasion? Can you guilt or shame someone into changing their behavior? You know, that's such an interesting question. And oddly, the interpersonal aspects of shame and game.

guilt have been studied much less than some of the other issues that you brought up, such as, um, is it healthy to feel, uh, a good amount of shame or a good amount of guilt? When is it problematic for the person? Um, I think the next generation is going to look much more at, um, shame and guilt as attempts to, uh, persuade or, uh, control other people. and there's surprisingly little research on that. So how do guilt and shame affect people's mental health? Are people who are prone to feeling shame more susceptible to some mental health disorders?

Yes, actually. Freud was wrong on one point. It turns out... Only one? Well, you know. He's quoted as saying guilt is the... the cause of neurosis. And actually, it seems to be more shame that people who are prone to feeling bad about themselves

because they failed or transgressed, people who are prone to shame about the self are more susceptible to a range of different psychological and behavioral problems. that doesn't mean if you're shame prone that you're condemned to a life of misery. I didn't get into this just randomly. My mother's shame prone. I'm shame prone. One of my daughters is shame prone. The correlation is, you know, there are people who are shame prone who can manage it.

And part of it is sort of resilience in managing it. And are there techniques? I mean, do you work with people and try to help them understand if you behave in a certain way, you can feel less shame, you can feel less guilt? Yeah, I think just actually telling people about educating them about the difference between shame and guilt, that typically when we feel shame, it's kind of out of proportion. You know, I may have hurt my friend's feelings and been thoughtless, but that doesn't mean I'm a terrible friend necessarily. I mean, and I think if you present people with the difference between two, there's often this aha sort of experience that people describe where, oh, you mean I don't have to feel really bad, the shame thing about me as a person?

I could feel guilt. And one of the big differences between shame and guilt has to do with what people are then motivated to do. and it turns out that, you know, we all fail and transgress at certain times, right? When people feel shame about their failures or transgressions, they're inclined to become defensive, to deny, to blame other people. So not really take responsibility and sometimes to get angry at other people for making them feel that way. But what they don't necessarily do is change their behavior.

They don't own it because it's so painful to think I'm a horrible person and own that. When people feel guilt about something they've really done and just focus on, I feel bad that I did that, they're more inclined to, well, first of all, a behavior is easier to change than a self. you can make, people are pressed not to hide and escape and deny. When people feel guilt about a specific behavior, they're inclined to want to confess, apologize, make things right. So let me ask you a developmental question. At what age in life do guilt and shame begin to emerge? And do they emerge at the same time or different times?

You know, I would have to turn to my expert developmental psychologist. I've given this a lot of thought and dealt through the literature. And my understanding of the development of the self, really, and what's required to feel guilt about a behavior without feeling shame about the self is the ability to distinguish between what I do and who I am. I don't think that's something that very, very young children are able to do. I think that doesn't really emerge much before age seven or eight. It depends on the child, right? But clearly, children feel shame well before that. There's embarrassment, there's shame, you know, within the first two years of life.

If guilt or shame is really interfering with your life, that it's not just an occasional reaction to a particular incident, but something that you feel frequently, what can you do to address that? And where might that be coming from? Well, people get stuck for a lot of different reasons. And I think that therapy can be very helpful. also confiding and working with a good friend who maybe is kinder to you than you are to yourself. But I think really recognizing the difference between I did a bad thing and therefore I'm a bad person

and that's the take-home point as opposed to I did a bad thing. Now, what can I do about it? I was going to say, what about guilt over things that aren't your fault or are out of your control, like the kind of guilt that people feel when they survive a tragedy unscathed and a lot of other people are hurt? I've been giving that a lot of thought recently, I think partly because of the COVID pandemic and such. my measure, I have a measure of individual differences in proneness to shame and guilt, how much people are prone to guilt, how much people are prone to shame in general. And almost all of the items, the situations, refer to events where the person really did do something.

You know, heard somebody's feelings, broke something, told a lie, you know, what have you. What I didn't include is feeling guilty about things that you didn't do that aren't your responsibility. And that's another huge swath of, you know, is it justified guilt? And I think, you know, the pandemic is a great example that, you know, for a long time, we just didn't know. I mean, you know, we may have passed along a terrible illness to a loved one without knowing that we had it or knowing how it was transmitted at some point. And yet we often feel guilty, I think, or many people do, for things that they couldn't have anticipated. They couldn't have known. And I think that's where really doing some careful rethinking, you know, with a good friend, a therapist, a counselor, a wise, loved one, to really look at it and say, well, could you have foreseen this?

did you really know? And I think along with that comes this idea that there's a zero-sum game, that that's how life is, that if I survived and somebody else didn't, I took something away from them. That's not how the world works, right? But we do have this sense that if I'm doing well, somebody else must be doing poorly, right? that there's only so much to go around.

And that's generally not the case. The more we cooperate, for example, the better off we all are. So there are so-called negative emotions that have some positive or evolutionary reason for existence. Is there anything that's beneficial about guilt or shame? Do they help motivate people to do better, to become better people? I haven't seen much evidence of shame having that effect or being shame prone about day-to-day transgressions. I wonder, and I don't know yet, but I have a hunch, that there are pivotal points, maybe one or two or three in a person's life where they do something that really is over the top. against their beliefs and feel shame and maybe use that to sort of like, oh, boy, maybe I better

recalibrate and rethink things here. But certainly that's not something on a day-to-day basis that we need or should be doing. I did read a paper, and I wish I could remember the name of the authors, but it changed my whole thinking about shame. It's a 2022 article just recently came out. So my whole story has been, in a nutshell, guilt is good, shame is bad. Well, of course, it's not that simple. I'm delighted to see the next generation, you know, expanding and looking in a much more nuanced way at these emotions.

But this paper, what it did show is that, you know, there's something about observing someone else being shame. that that is the key. I used to think that shame was around because it was useful back in pre-verbal days and, you know, for a variety of reasons, it was adaptive to shame people who were not able to keep up at the herd or whatever. But we're not there now. And so I used to think it was just a vestige of, you know,

earlier times in human development. But now this paper suggests that if you and I are having an exchange, and let's say that you go water your lawn during a drought, and I call you out on it publicly, well, you're not likely to change that behavior, you're likely to get defensive and like what's your deal with telling me what to do and all like that. But other people watching us who see me shaming you are less likely themselves to go water their lawn. I mean, that wasn't the exact thing that they studied, but that was the basic idea is seeing others shamed is powerful. So it serves a purpose, yeah. Yes. And I thought that was just so interesting. Are guilt and shame universal, or are there people who,

never experience one or the other. That's a really interesting question. Michael Lewis, who is one of the pioneers in research on shame and guilt, he happened notion. He talked about some people are guilt blind. They just can't acknowledge or grapple with a human failure, a human sin, a human transgression. and just feel guilt, they automatically slide right into shame.

And that that is, you know, really problematic in a lot of ways, right? In my work with people involved in the criminal justice system, I've worked mostly with people charged with felonies and, you know, really the full range. we've also assessed and studied psychopathy. And that's a relatively small percentage of people who are incarcerated only about 19%. Of those 19% who kind of reached criteria or threshold for being considered having psychopathy, they do feel shame. You know, it's easy to feel dist and humiliated and shamed,

not about the things that you and I might feel shamed about, but shames that they got caught, you know, whatever. Gilt, not so much. That seems to be kind of missing some people. Yeah. Really being able to own a behavior and say, I'm saying, I did it, and I'm sorry. Are there other disorders that are associated with an inability to feel guilt?

I'm thinking, for example, borderline personality disorder where people tend not to feel like anything's their fault. Everybody else is aligned against them. So very, very complicated. I mean, shame-proneness is related to people with borderline personality disorder tend to be high in shame. But guilt? Not so much. I have to go back and look at the data. I mean, here's the thing is

if you feel both shame and guilt or if something is correlated with both shame and guilt, shame kind of takes over the whole picture. You know, what really matters is can you feel guilt about a behavior, own it and not get into this. what really is a very selfish, self-focused emotion. Me, me, me, me, me, me. I'm such a horrible person as opposed to I did a bad thing.

You know, I think that hurt your feelings. And it turns out that when people feel guilt about a specific behavior, they're more likely to feel empathy for the person that they hurt. if they feel shame about the same event, they're more likely, they're not so concerned about, gee, I hurt your feelings and I feel empathy for you. They have interpersonal concerns, but it's more like, what are you thinking of me? Are you thinking that I'm such a horrible person too? Now, I understand that there is a connection between being prone to shame and prone to a, anxiety. Can you talk about that, how that has arisen in people? Well, you know, it's not

just anxiety. So, you know, we find that proneness to shame is associated with a whole range of internalizing and externalizing problems. So shame is associated with anxiety and depression in some people, right? It's associated. with aggression and anger and ineffective ways of managing anger for some people, for some people both. It's been linked to eating disorders. It's been linked to, so I think, you know, we don't know why some people are more susceptible to one kind of disorder as opposed to another.

I think being shame prone doesn't necessarily put you on track to. experience certain kinds of symptoms. But it is an attack on the self that is painful and that, you know, serves to essentially disorganize the self and make it less effective. We're difficult to maintain, you know, a good sense of self-esteem and self-confidence. What about sex and age differences when it comes to shame? What have you found there?

Ah, that's interesting. Females of all ages, whether you look at children or adolescents or college students or parents or grandparents or whatever, women, girls score high. than men or boys on both shame and guilt problems. But women score higher in pretty much all kinds of emotions except anger, which is about equivalent. Right. So there becomes the never-ending question of is it that women have more access to emotion, experience more emotions more intensely, or are we just better socialized to

recognize, acknowledge, and feel comfortable sharing that. You know, it's just hard to know. But what we have found is, although women may be more prone to shame than men, girls more than boys, the relationship of shame-proneness to aggression or depression or depression or what have you is about the same for men and women. So if you're a woman who experiences a lot more shame than the average woman, you're going to be just as susceptible as a man who experienced maybe a little less shame, but more than the average man is what it comes down. So how did you get interested in studying these topics? I understand that the time that you began to delve into it, that you're pretty much out there by yourself.

Well, it was. I was born not to do this. It was a well-intentioned senior mentors and like that. Although I have to say, Cy Feshbach, my graduate advisor, we did some work on television and children. And after I graduated, I said, Cy, you know, I'm really not that interested in this. And I'm sure he had hoped that I would continue in that area. I said, you know, I'm interested in the shame and guilt stuff.

I know it's kind of flaky and everybody's telling me it's flaky, but, and he's like, go for it. Just go for it. And I am so grateful for that. I was really very much influenced by Helen Block Lewis, who wrote a book in 1971 that laid out this distinction between shame and guilt that seems to be well supported now. And I was also very, very much influenced by Norma Feshbach, who made a career out of articulating theoretically what empathy is and then coming up with a measure. And for me, you know, I saw her make a wonderful career that way and thought, well, shame and guilt. Now there's an interesting one. I did mention that I was raised Catholic,

so it kind of made a joke about that. But I want to, so everybody always asked me, you haven't yet about religion. That was my next question. So I just assumed because I was Catholic, that's how I got into this. And, you know, I can tell you a little bit about what my thoughts were on this back when I was six.

But it turns out when you actually look at, like shame-proneness and guilt-proneness for people who are Jewish versus Catholic versus some other kind of Christian versus Hindu versus atheists versus agnastics. There's just almost no difference at all. But it's amazing. It's like something that should be there that's not. And we've looked at current religious affiliation. and we've also looked at religious affiliation as, you know, a child,

because sometimes people change their religions and religious beliefs in adulthood. Doesn't matter. Nobody's got a corner on shame or guilt, and we're all susceptible, you know, for better or worse. And I think the big thing is to figure out ways to make the most of these negative emotions and be able to resolve them in constructive ways and then move on. Well, I will confess that I too was raised Roman Catholic, and I have always had the sense that shame and guilt were tools to get you to tow the religious line.

I mean, it was a way of controlling people. If you felt shame or guilt around the things that the church told you, you should feel shameful and guilty about. You would be a better member of the church. I mean, the fact that you had to go to confession, I mean, when I was a kid, they wanted to confess your sins every Saturday night. It was dreadful.

Well, yeah. And God forbid you should forget one because that's not going to be forgiven. God knows. I'm sure. Right. It's an interesting take on that. The message I got.

actually was, and this really disturbed me a lot, was, I grew up in Buffalo. I don't know if the Roman Catholic churches are more graphic than other places, but as a child, you know, I was surrounded by these, you know, the stations of the cross that were very, very gory for a child. Yes. And the emphasis was on how much suffering Jesus did for us worthless, people and of course I'm going to sin right I'm not a I knew by age four I wasn't going to be a saint the message I got was the better the person you are the worse you should feel well that's really troubling I should feel really bad and that'll make me a good person where does that get us

so that was my conundrum and so it was it was it was it was It would seem to me that at least it's being better understood that that's not necessarily the best motivator in the world. I mean, like my sense today is that, for example, when you go to your physician, you're, you know, your primary care physician, that you're not shamed into, oh, you weigh too much. You know, if you don't deal with your weight, you're going to die. Instead, they look at your weight and then they talk up generally about how you're doing. You know, are you getting that sense as well that there is an understanding that shaming people into changing their

behavior is not effective? Yes, and I think one place where that has been just a tremendous shift is in treatment of substance abuse disorders. So it used to be the interventions that were truly shaming events where everybody gets together and dumps on the person with the substance abuse problem. And, you know, nowadays, well, you know, we have just a much more. we're kind and gentle way of approaching that that does not involve shame, but support and love. What's the relationship between shame and embarrassment?

Oh, yes. That's so interesting. I think many people think of embarrassment is kind of a a less intense, milder version of shame, it turns out that embarrassment and shame are really quite different. First of all, people can feel ashamed when they're alone. They most often feel shamed in social situations or about social events, but people almost never feel embarrassed when they're by themselves. I mean, you can do whatever you want in your living room, as long as your blinds are drawn, right?

But, and then when people feel embarrassed, there's kind of something a little funny and amusing about it, you know? The embarrassment, look, I wish I know we're doing a podcast, but it looks a little like shame, like you're kind of looking down, but you're sort of looking up and there's a little smile and, you know, it happened, and there's nothing funny about shame at all. It is not funny. It hurts.

And if you can bring some levity and some humor to it in a way that's supportive, that's a wonderful thing to do for a partner or a loved one. Now, I know that a lot of the work you're doing now involves interventions to help people in the criminal justice system. How can our knowledge and understanding of shame and guilt be leveraged? to help people who are in that system? You know, I'm not sure that that is the most important direction at this point. You know, I mean, that's originally how I got involved in doing research with this population was thinking that we could leverage shame and guilt and such. I you know the biggest predictor of

changing one's behavior and not recidivating of not being reincarcerated is not misusing substances that's you know one really big thing the other biggest predictor is self-control and so that that does pose some interesting angles of how to help people increase a sense of self-control in areas that are important to them,

and especially around substance abuse. Substance abuse is a funny area because nobody really owns it. Like clinical psychology is like, this isn't our thing. We don't do this. And yeah, social workers are kind of like, well, that's not really our thing. And it just sort of, I don't know, nobody really quite has owned it. Perhaps because it's so difficult. Well, there's a lot of hope.

And many different humane approaches, much more so than interventions. You know, the shamed fests. And some work for others and some work for some, some for others. So just to wrap up, I like to ask. researchers, what else they're working on? What's your next big project? I'm not really quite sure. I'm at crossroads right now. I don't, it's difficult right now with COVID still, you know, in the background to do the kind of research we were doing in the jails and prisons. You know, having people from outside coming in, I mean, it's just

it's made it, you know, a difficult situation, even more difficult. Right now I'm really focused on seeing the last of my graduate students get where they want to go. And then thinking about next steps, I think maybe stepping back and looking at clinical psychology more broadly what it offered. when it's helpful and when it's not. And what non-specialists can expect and what's okay and what's not okay. Well, I want to thank you for joining me today. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Thank you. I have really enjoyed it. And I want to thank APA for all their support of science and the marriage of clinical work in science. We will keep that up. Thanks. You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please leave us a review.

If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Kondyne. Thank you for listening for the American Psychological Association. I'm Kim Mills.