\n<\/p>\n
F<\/span>uelled by the relief of having finished end-of-year exams, the pleasure of a warm late spring evening and quite a\u00a0lot of alcohol, the house party was one of those that should have been remembered for all the right reasons. At some point, later in the night, Chris Moore and three friends were ready to leave. The party was some way out of town \u2013 Cambridge \u2013 and too far to walk, and, anyway, there was a car, temptingly, in the driveway, its keys in the ignition.<\/p>\n Somebody \u2013 Moore can\u2019t remember who \u2013 suggested they drive back, and with the recklessness of youth and too much beer, they all got in. \u201cI ended up in the front passenger seat and fell asleep,\u201d he says. He came to, being taken out of the car by paramedics, then sitting by the side of the road, his face streaming with blood, surrounded by the lights of the emergency services. They had been in an accident, and Moore had hit the windscreen, asleep, and had deep lacerations on his forehead. He was the only one of the four who had been injured. What he didn\u2019t know until the next day, in hospital after surgery, was that they had driven into a cyclist and killed him.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt this incredible shock, that mass combination of emotions, obviously the horror of what had happened,\u201d he says. \u201cThe massive regret of what we\u2019d done.\u201d He\u00a0was\u00a0also fearful of what it meant for him and the people he loved \u2013 what would his parents think? \u201cThere isn\u2019t a simple story in terms of what the emotions were. It was just a roiling mass of different negative emotions. That\u2019s why I think of guilt as being complex, because all of these other emotions were tied into it.\u201d<\/p>\n We should embrace healthy or productive guilt rather than try to hide from it<\/p>\n Moore is speaking over Zoom from his office at Dalhousie University, in Nova Scotia, where he is professor of psychology and neuroscience. He has been in Canada since 1985, where he met his wife and had a daughter, and his English accent is just about clinging on. Moore has written a book, The Power of Guilt, informed by his own experience and his 40\u2011year career as a psychology researcher. His argument is that while guilt is a painful emotion to experience, it\u2019s ultimately helpful \u2013 at its heart it functions as a drive to repair relationships, between individuals but also societies. \u201cI wanted to give guilt a makeover in terms of its reputation. We often think of guilt as not a nice thing, because it\u2019s painful and ugly, and I wanted to show why it\u2019s actually good for us, and how, if we treat it properly, we can benefit from it. We should embrace healthy or productive guilt rather than try to hide from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Guilt, he thinks, is not its own emotion, but a\u00a0combination of others that are, he says, \u201cperhaps more basic. So there\u2019s anxiety, which is the fear that our relationships, or something we care about, has been harmed in some way. There\u2019s compassion, sadness or empathy that we feel for the person we might have hurt, and there\u2019s anger at ourselves for what we may have done. Those emotions can be mixed in different concentrations.\u201d If self-directed anger dominates, \u201cthat can bleed into shame, which is the idea that you\u2019re a\u00a0bad\u00a0person<\/em>, not just that you did a bad thing<\/em>. That tends to make you shy away from relationships rather than try to heal them.\u201d In healthy guilt, those emotions are more balanced. \u201cYou realise you have responsibility, and that you need to make amends in some way. You feel that anxiety, but that motivates you to try to heal the relationship rather than to run away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n E<\/span>ven before the accident, Moore was familiar with guilt. He grew up in Surrey, the middle child of three in a Catholic family. \u201cI was an overscrupulous kid when it came to religion,\u201d he says. He remembers saying his nightly prayers before bed, and if his mind drifted and he hadn\u2019t concentrated fully on each word, he would repeat the prayer again and again. \u201cThat was stimulated by the guilt about not doing it properly and therefore damaging my relationship with God,\u201d he says. If that happened, he worried, he might not get to heaven. That sounds more like self-interest, I point out. But fear is another component of guilt, says Moore.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was about fear for myself,\u201d he says, \u201cbut that was combined with anger at myself.\u201d There was also, looking back as an adult, \u201csome compassion for harming God. I\u00a0felt that empathy \u2013 Christ went so far for me and I can\u2019t even be a good person in return. So there is a mixture of compassion and self-directed anger, combined with anxiety over the loss of that relationship [with God]. That is the feeling of guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n By his teens, Moore had abandoned Catholicism. He went to Cambridge to study natural sciences, struggling in his first year, but by the end of his second, when he discovered an interest in psychology, he had started to settle in and study harder. Like many students, though, \u201cI did, unfortunately, get sidetracked by other pursuits and a lot of drinking, and not great behaviour\u201d. Being part of a group that took someone\u2019s car and drove drunk, was clearly stupid and a catastrophic mistake but, back then, not entirely out of character.<\/p>\n It was incredible for them to be at my bedside and explicitly say, \u2018We forgive you\u2019<\/p>\n Moore and two others in the car were sentenced to six months in prison (the driver got nine). In his book, Moore writes that, not unreasonably, they had been considered at fault as a group, but the lawyers for the passengers appealed, which was successful. By then, Moore had spent a week in a high-security facility, followed by nearly three months in an open prison.<\/p>\n When he was in hospital after the accident, his parents arrived and, unusually for them, were gentle with him and told him they loved him \u2013 the first time he had experienced this from them. Their reaction was \u201chugely important\u201d, he says. \u201cI was in that transition from childhood to adulthood, and I was still part of that nuclear family. They were not expressive, loving parents. They were loving in the sense that the fact of their parenting showed they loved us, and of course they did, but they were not expressive in their love for us. It was what you might call a typical, middle-class British family of that time, but my feeling was there was always some doubt about whether I was loved, and that was dispelled at that moment. So that was huge.\u201d<\/p>\n The car had hit a group of cyclists, killing one and injuring others. One of the group came to see Moore in hospital, accompanied by some friends. They were all members of the Christian Union. \u201cIt was incredible for them to be at my bedside and explicitly say: \u2018We forgive you.\u2019 Their approach was that only God can judge, and that our duty as Christians is to forgive.\u201d What reassured him that it was within their gift \u2013 as opposed to the family of the young man they had killed \u2013 to forgive him? (Later, the family did write to Moore\u2019s parents to offer their own forgiveness.) \u201cAt the time, I was in no state to do much analysis of whether this was appropriate or not. Certainly we could question whether they had a right to do it, but it was the fact they did it that made the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Chris Moore and his parents at his graduation ceremony, Cambridge University, 1985.<\/span> Photograph: courtesy of Chris Moore<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t miraculously alleviate his guilt. \u201cBut an important part of it had been relieved. I\u2019m not trying to say I had a right not to feel guilty any more. All I\u2019m\u00a0doing is reflecting on how the psychology of it works, how what people do within relationships or social interaction affects how we feel.\u201d<\/p>\n He writes that in the first few weeks after the accident, he couldn\u2019t imagine ever escaping the weight of his remorse, but that forgiveness, particularly from the survivors of the accident, was absolutely key to being able to live a good life. \u201cI was incredibly lucky, because if that had not happened, then there\u2019s no question that guilt would have lingered for much longer and probably still would be affecting me significantly today.\u201d<\/p>\n It did shape his life, and the research and work he would go on to do, including this book. Of the four friends in that car, two have since died. Moore is in touch occasionally with the other one, and offered him the chance to read a draft of his book; he declined. \u201cHe\u2019s left it behind. For him it hasn\u2019t, perhaps, stayed with him in the same way it stayed with me.\u201d<\/p>\n F<\/span>reud\u2019s theory of guilt is that it starts in early childhood, based on a fear of losing the love of one\u2019s caregiver, and that conscience develops as a\u00a0self-punishing way of controlling one\u2019s behaviour. In the mid-90s, Moore read a paper by the US social psychologist Roy Baumeister, who suggested guilt is the result of damaging a relationship (not, as once thought, about breaking the moral codes either of society or our conscience) and of empathy for another\u2019s distress. This informed Moore\u2019s own thinking.<\/p>\n As parents, we can encourage our children to have a healthier relationship to guilt by encouraging empathy. \u201cThis approach uses what we sometimes call guilt induction,\u201d says Moore (what many of us might think of as a \u201cguilt trip\u201d). \u201cImagine a child has done something mean to a playmate, and the parent says: \u2018Look how you made Johnny feel, look how you made Johnny cry.\u2019 You\u2019re trying to induce that empathic side of guilt, to help the child recognise that what they did was probably wrong and that they should attempt some form of repair.\u201d If the parent punishes the child instead, \u201cthat makes them feel bad about themselves, [think] they\u2019re a bad person, and the argument is that\u2019s going to be less conducive to repairing relationships\u201d.<\/p>\n Guilt doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a bad parent. It just means you\u2019re sensitive to your child\u2019s needs<\/p>\n When does a guilt trip become damaging? \u201cThe question is whether you\u2019re doing it for learning purposes versus trying to control the behaviour and trying to get more attention on you.\u201d When children become teenagers, the danger can be that parents use guilt trips \u201cto promote conformity to their own wishes and family ideals. That may be overtly troublesome in that there is tension and conflict, or the child conforms, but has more deep-seated issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Is parenting guilt inevitable? \u201cI think it\u2019s close to inevitable,\u201d says Moore. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean it has to be damaging, it just means you\u2019re likely to feel it. Keep in mind that I\u2019m thinking of guilt through the lens that it\u2019s a positive emotion. It feels bad, but it\u2019s good for you. You feel guilt as a parent because you want the best for your child, but it needs to be in the right dose. One of the problems is that parents, particularly mothers, are bombarded with all the things that could go wrong \u2013 whether they don\u2019t breastfeed, too much screen time, all of the ways in which you parent.\u201d Being a working parent is likely to create guilt. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a bad parent. It just means you\u2019re sensitive to the needs of your child. That\u2019s why guilt arises, not because you\u2019re doing a bad job.\u201d People with pets, especially those with dogs, appear to experience similar parental guilt.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018A functioning life, and a functioning world, is all about strong relationships, and the point of guilt is to strengthen and manage relationships.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Carolina Andrade\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Why do I feel guilty when I walk past a police officer, even though I\u2019ve done nothing wrong? \u201cI do, too, but not because of my past,\u201d says Moore. \u201cThis is the funny thing about the human mind: [seeing a police officer is] a\u00a0stimulus to the things that you might have done wrong. That\u2019s in connection to guilt within the context of authority figures, who provide us with exposure to the norms and standards that we ultimately adopt within our internal guiding system \u2013 our conscience. The set of rules that make up our conscience is never complete, there\u2019s always a chance that there\u2019s something else we need to pay attention to.\u201d Seeing a police officer may be a subconscious reminder of that, he says.<\/p>\n Women appear to be more prone to guilt than men. There is a cultural element, he says, to societal expectations, but women do tend to care more about relationships, and about relationships going well. \u201cIf\u00a0guilt is about trying to manage your relationships and make sure they\u2019re healthy, then women are going to feel more guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n As a society, individuals appear to be becoming more isolated and self-centred. Might this lead to less guilt? It\u00a0isn\u2019t going to lead to more psychopaths, he says, because that is as a result of brain dysfunction, but he does worry we can focus too much on ourselves as individuals. \u201cWe\u00a0are ultimately a social species; we wouldn\u2019t be where we are today in terms of evolution if we did not have such incredibly complex and sophisticated ways of interacting with other people. We are the most social species, and to think of ourselves as being sophisticated individuals is to miss the point that really it\u2019s about the relationships that we have or should have.\u201d<\/p>\n How should people alleviate their own guilt? If you\u2019re feeling guilty because you\u2019ve harmed someone, then a\u00a0genuine apology and an attempt at reparation is vital, says Moore. \u201cFor relationships to be healed, both sides have to want to heal it. Guilt is what motivates the one who\u2019s done harm to try to seek forgiveness. Then, I\u00a0think, there is some onus on the other to bend towards the person that harmed them and forgive them if they feel the relationship is worth keeping.\u201d If there is a pattern of harm, he adds, this may not be the case.<\/p>\n If the guilt arises from something long ago, or where it would be impossible to make amends, self\u2011forgiveness, says Moore, \u201cis really the route to healing\u201d. He stresses he is not a therapist, but one way that might help is to \u201cstep outside yourself and look at yourself from a\u00a0third\u2011person perspective. Imagine you were the person you\u2019d harmed, and that you had received the acts of reparation or apology that you provided \u2013 would you forgive that person? Would you forgive yourself for what you\u2019ve done if you were somebody else? I think if you can honestly say you did all you could do, you felt genuine contrition and sadness, and wanted to heal the relationship, then you deserve forgiveness.\u201d Some people, he adds, are over-conscientious \u201cand they tend to be very guilt-prone. I think being aware of one\u2019s conscience and the role that it plays in guilt is important, because then you can say: \u2018Maybe it\u2019s being unreasonable here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n M<\/span>oore was forgiven \u2013 not just by his parents and friends, and those affected by his part in that awful night, but by wider society. After a year\u2019s suspension, his college allowed him to finish his degree, then do a PhD. He thinks he would probably not have gone on to have the career he has if his research in the 80s on developmental psychology had required a criminal record check. \u201cAnd that seems, to me, to be overly harsh.\u201d This can disproportionately affect certain groups \u2013 young black men in the US, for instance, whose records for relatively minor crimes have an impact on their opportunities over the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n Should there be more guilt in the world? I\u2019m thinking of politicians who inflict war on others, or whose decisions mean millions of people suffer as a result. \u201cI think there should be a recognition of what guilt is and what it\u2019s for,\u201d says Moore. \u201cI think there should be more attempts to keep our relationships strong, whether those relationships are at the individual level, or whether they\u2019re larger scale in terms of societies. A functioning life, and a functioning world, is all about strong relationships, and the point of guilt is to strengthen and manage relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the criminal justice system, Moore thinks restorative justice should play a bigger role, \u201cbecause it puts relationships at the heart, and says that crime is\u00a0an\u00a0offence against individuals, but also the community, and we need to think how we restore those relationships in society\u201d.<\/p>\n The argument that individual Britons alive today weren\u2019t involved in slavery, and therefore shouldn\u2019t feel collective guilt, is weak<\/p>\n The idea of collective guilt is a current one. In the global Black Lives Matter movement, the idea of \u201cwhite guilt\u201d reached the mainstream, although many activists argue it is unproductive. \u201cYou may feel [white guilt] for the wrong reasons,\u201d says Moore. \u201cLet\u2019s say you know you\u2019re not being progressive enough for your \u2018in\u2019 group, and you feel guilt about that, and that leads to virtue signalling and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n Collective guilt can also place too much emphasis on individuals, rather than the group. In the case of the UK\u2019s role in slavery, and the question of reparations, the argument that individual Britons alive today weren\u2019t involved, and therefore shouldn\u2019t feel guilt, is weak. \u201cYou\u2019re saying, for the purposes of this issue: \u2018I\u2019m\u00a0not part of the group, I\u2019m an individual, and I had no responsibility for it.\u2019 The question is: did your group have responsibility for it? Did the UK as an entity, as a collective, a nation, have responsibility for it? And if they did, then there is a reasonable debate to have about reparations.\u201d It\u2019s not easy to resolve, Moore acknowledges. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say I have any kind of solution, but because you can think of society as about the relationships between groups, then in principle, you can say collective guilt can play a role.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately it comes back to healing relationships, whether individually or at societal level. \u201cI really like to take a relationship-first approach to things. I don\u2019t like to think of myself as an individual. I like to think of myself as the collective of relationships that I have in the world, whether it\u2019s to my daughter or my wife, my colleagues or friends or whatever, that\u2019s what makes me, not my individuality. I think if you have a relationship-first approach, it actually changes the way you go about trying to fix these things. I don\u2019t want to make myself a\u00a0better person; I want to make my relationships<\/em> better.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not obvious from my laptop screen, but Moore has scars on his forehead from when he hit his head in the accident \u2013 he points to his left temple. Is that a daily reminder? \u201cI\u2019m still aware of it, obviously, but I don\u2019t think about that event every day. The message that I\u00a0want to get across is that, to some extent, anybody can do really stupid things and damaging things to other people.\u201d For most people, he adds, \u201cthere should be a path of forgiveness and reconciliation; that\u2019s really the message\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I was offered forgiveness, it\u2019s my responsibility to accept that forgiveness.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Carolina Andrade\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Has he spent his life trying to make up for it? To prove he is a \u201cgood\u201d person after all? No more than anyone else trying to be a good person, he says. Because of that crucial week in hospital \u2013 when Moore was offered forgiveness by his family and one of the victims of the accident \u2013 \u201cI\u00a0didn\u2019t come out of it with shame. I didn\u2019t think I was a\u00a0bad person. I thought I was, at the time, a stupid person. I\u2019d done a stupid thing, drunk too much, agreed to get in a car that wasn\u2019t ours, with somebody who was not capable of driving. But it doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m a bad person.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 40 years on, does Moore still feel guilty about the accident? \u201cThere were different sources of guilt attached to different relationships that had potentially been harmed. So with my parents, I don\u2019t feel any guilt, because they gave me their forgiveness. I don\u2019t feel guilt in relation to my friends. I don\u2019t feel guilt in relation to the criminal justice system. The only place would be guilt in relation to the person who was killed and the survivors. But I guess where I\u2019m at is that because I was offered forgiveness, it\u2019s my responsibility to accept that forgiveness.\u201d He does still feel guilt, he adds. \u201cBut not nearly as strong as what I\u00a0felt at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal by Chris Moore is published on 8 January by August Books (\u00a320). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fuelled by the relief of having finished end-of-year exams, the pleasure of a warm late spring evening and quite a\u00a0lot of alcohol, the house party was one of those that should have been remembered for all the right reasons. At some point, later in the night, Chris Moore and three friends were ready to leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[18108,21681,105,8424,2278,37,5817,9546,632,4476,393,6200,637],"class_list":{"0":"post-40289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-cyclist","9":"tag-drunkdriving","10":"tag-expert","11":"tag-guilt","12":"tag-healing","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-incident","15":"tag-involved","16":"tag-killed","17":"tag-powers","18":"tag-student","19":"tag-wellbeing","20":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}