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Comment by michaelwww | Hacker News Reader

> “Guilt-prone people tend to carry a strong sense of responsibility to others, and that responsibility makes other people see them as leaders,”

> Although “guilt” and “shame” may seem quite similar to most people... Whereas someone who feels guilty feels bad about a specific mistake and wants to make amends, a person who’s ashamed of a mistake feels bad about himself or herself and shrinks away from the error.

Both of these make so much sense to me that I'm surprised I didn't think of them before. People tell you not to take care of other people ("mind your business") but it seems that an appropriate amount of that is a great strength.

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I've also heard it phrased: guilt is felt when you don't live up to your own expectations while shame is felt when you don't live up to the expectations of others.

An even simpler way to think of it, based on a TED talk I saw (sorry, can't think of who she was ATM): guilt = i did something bad, shame = i am bad

Guilt can therefore be considered necessary for self-improvement, whereas shame just doesn't do anybody any good.

edit: It was a talk by Brené Brown, not sure which one

This is a constructive way to split them I think - also what helped me was the notion of “good” and “bad” being smoothed out by a counselor years ago who helped a lot. We make so many inconsequential decisions in a day and week and month that sometimes it’s just big picture reactionary. No good or bad in what type of sandwich, or where to get gas, which leaves time to think about goals (ex: make time to exercise).

Also on a long enough timeline what was a good choice at the time can later take on negative association due to circumstances, and occasionally there’s no right answer in the first place. Just takes making a decision other than to stay put.

A shame can be converted to guilt if we learn how to forgive ourselves just like how we forgive others. That often puts us on right track.

I feel this is a profound statement - I'm unreligious and yet that aspect of some religions (forgive others that you may be forgiven) seems highly sensible and you have effectively completed the explanation of why it is sensible.

> whereas shame just doesn't do anybody any good.

Actually it's sometimes a helpful feeling -- or evolution would have made it disappear.

But yes, many people feel shame too often? In a non constructive way,

At the same time, consider this: You're trying something new, maybe singing karaoke for the first time. It doesn't go well, you sing the wrong tones, the wrong lyrics, and the others start looking at you with surprise and a bit disappoinment in their eyes.

Should you continue singing more and more songs like that, they'll start to think that you're clueless about the impression you're making on others. They can start thinking you have some minor mental problems (if you sing bad enough and go on and on happily).

But instead you feel ... Shame, and withdraw: that day you don't sing more karaoke songs. Back home, you practice in the shower, and two weeks later you try again an now it goes ok.

Note - this is not intended as an attack on the poster above. I'm just a bit suspicious about this "guilt / shame" idea.

I feel like this "guilt / shame" distinction is not driven by people who understand psychology very well, or who don't really care about communicating clearly. IIRC it was originally used to describe different cultures and now it's trying to be used to describe "good" guilt/shame and "bad" guilt/shame as two completely different things.

Scientists often avoid using 'normal' words to describe things, because 'normal' people get confused and start pointless arguments over it. As an example of something that causes constant confusion, 'bugs' are insects with sucking mouthparts (I am not a biologist, there's a bit more to it) and anyone who calls a beetle a bug is using unscientific terminology. It just causes a lot of confusion. Technical definitions shouldn't try to hijack ambiguous terms that are in common use unless you just want to sound clever in internet discussions when talking about what words 'really mean', or you want to appropriate existing connotations over the word (e.g. you want to make your definitions a lot more important than they are).

If the people trying to differentiate "guilt" and "shame" understand human nature so well, why would they use terms that are simply going to cause confusion?

I suspect there's a broad range of things that we'd describe as "guilt" or "shame" (and depending on the person it would vary), and these might be good or bad depending on the context. I also think that if we want to use "grown up" definitions that people will understand unambiguously (e.g. anxiety over peer judgement?) then it would pay to just use these, rather than making every discussion over "guilt" and "shame" simply be discussion over what those words "really mean".

The guilt vs shame or feeling bad about something I did vs feeling bad about who I am argument is a useful simplification. They describe either endpoint where most people are somewhere in the middle with a mixture of both.

There’s a tradeoff here though. Using Latin names for guilt or shame might be fine in research papers, but if you want to translate that into - for example- individual therapy you are going to need to talk about guilt and shame, and so some clarification of definition is going to be helpful.

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