the rattling of charitable donation tins in full public view;
• ‘Smoking harms others’, ‘Drinking and driving kills’ and Neighbourhood Watch scheme posters.
All these examples give our positive-guilt buttons a gentle push. Sometimes, however, guilt buttons need a stronger push to transform them into a positive force. Interestingly, a series of research studies done by Stanford University in the United States, led by Professor Francis Flynn and Becky Schaumberg, revealed a strong correlation between guilt proneness and leadership. Guilt-prone members of the research group seemed to the rest of the participants to be making more of an effort than the others to ensure everyone’s voice was being heard, to lead the discussion and generally to take charge. Even when they did the test in a real-world setting, a strong link emerged between a participant’s guilt proneness and the extent to which others saw the person as a leader. Becky Schaumberg reported that these guilt-prone people showed the most responsibility. They were prepared to lay people off in order to keep a company profitable, even though they felt bad about doing so.
… the most constructive response [to making mistakes], and the one people seem to recognise as a sign of leadership, is to feel guilty enough to want to fix the problem.
PROFESSOR BECKY SCHAUMBERG, STANFORD UNIVERSITY4
Is it any wonder that leaders tend to use guilt frequently to push or pull the people they lead?
Finally, it is important to remember that for guilt to work positively, there does need to be an element of caring involved. For example:
• The people involved are part of a group who love or respect each other such as a family, friendship group or team of close colleagues. Miguel, a star footballer, went out on a drinking binge to celebrate his brother’s birthday. It was the night before a big match and the match was lost. The coach had noticed that Miguel had not been performing anywhere near his best. When he confronted him, it was obvious that Miguel felt more than usually gutted and quickly confessed what he had done. He expressed his guilt to his teammates, apologised profusely and asked for their help to stop this happening again.
• The guilty party has empathy with the victim’s suffering and cares enough about them to want to make amends. Sometimes this empathy may have to be induced to prompt a caring feeling. For example, a ten-year-old boy had stolen from another child at school. The teachers arranged for him to meet with his victim and hear about how the boy felt and the difficulties that the theft brought him.
• The guilty party cares about the goal that has been mutually agreed and is still mutually wanted. When Carole had an affair, she and her husband Bob agreed to stay together and try to make it work for the sake of the children. A year later Bob started an affair himself. Six months later, his fourteen-year-old son uncovered his secret. Bob didn’t feel bad for his wife, but he did feel guilty that he had not been careful enough to hide it from the children. He broke off the affair and committed to couple counselling with his wife.
Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
VOLTAIRE
Summary: Positive guilt
• If guilt is a justified response to some real wrongdoing and motivates the wrongdoer to take constructive action to repair the wrong, it is positive.
• Anticipated guilt can be used positively to strengthen and motivate individuals and groups of all kinds.
• Pressing our positive-guilt buttons can encourage us to be more empathic and helpful.
• If we are prone to guilt, we could make a good leader.
Suppressed guilt
This is the kind of guilt that occurs when someone is aware of the feeling but consciously keeps it hidden inside, although it does then have a habit of surfacing into the mind from time to time. This can happen without any obvious prompting, but more frequently a reminder will trigger it. The person may well intend to do something about their guilt one day, but as time goes on they find this harder to do. So their guilt grows, and then they beat themselves up for procrastinating. The longer they leave it, the harder it becomes to deal with.
Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.
PLAUTUS, ROMAN PLAYWRIGHT
Over the many years since my daughter Laura’s death at age 19 in a car accident, I have had quite a number of emails, cards and letters expressing this kind of guilt. They have come from a range of people, including many of her friends who were her age at the time.
Most have said similar things: they have often thought of Laura and felt bad that they had never expressed to us what she meant to them. They have then told me about the qualities they appreciated in her and how much they missed her. They have apologised for not letting me know this earlier, when others did come to see me and send cards. They say, or imply, that they have felt guilty ever since. What a shame that they were unnecessarily troubled internally for so long with this bad feeling. Their ‘wrongdoing’ was so understandable and forgivable.
Festering inner guilt does our mental health no favours. It eats away at our self-esteem and makes us more prone to anxiety. It can also cause people to behave in inappropriate ways. For example, a person who is having (or has had) an affair will often take out their tension on the family whom they love and don’t want to desert. Or they may do the opposite and overcompensate by spoiling the children and even the spouse they are cheating on.
The longer we leave suppressed guilt locked away, the harder it can be to confess and deal with. Firstly, the wrongdoing can become less forgivable by the victim, even though they may appear to have moved on.
Secondly, by the time the wrongdoer is ready to deal with it, the chance that trust and respect can be established between the parties has probably diminished greatly.
Thirdly, after a very long period even sensible people can suddenly get a now-or-never urge to confess or apologise. By then, their overwhelming emotional need is so strong that they can make a clumsy or inept attempt to talk to the victim. Here’s a sad example:
A well-known and internationally respected person recently confessed on the radio that she felt bad about the way she had run away from home some twenty-five years ago. She hadn’t spoken to her parents since. She found out that they were due to travel from a certain airport and decided to go there. She found their check-in queue and went up to them. She wasn’t recognised, so she told them who she was. They greeted her politely and then walked on, and she hasn’t seen them since. How very, very sad.
I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn’t feel wrong, I didn’t feel right!
JOYCE MEYER, AMERICAN AUTHOR
Then fourthly, an overdue ‘outing’ of guilt often causes the victim’s and their supporters’ thirst for revenge to be intensified. This can lead to inappropriate and sometimes cruel punishment. Recently, for example, a number of court cases have taken place in our country against people who committed seriously dreadful crimes over 40 years ago. Several were given prison sentences, even though they are now in their late eighties and nineties and are seriously ill. Mercy was not considered an option, even when
