Guilt: Personal
inferior. Distinguishing the two emotions
and Collective
MICHAEL J. A. WOHL &
NYLA R. BRANSCOMBE
PERSONAL GUILT
Guilt is an unpleasant emotion that is evoked
when people’s behavior deviates from salient
moral standards concerning how other
people should be treated. Simply deviating
from these standards, however, is insufficient
to experience guilt. For guilt to occur, the
individual must recognize that his or her
behavior is inconsistent with what is norma-
tive with regard to the treatment of others
and accept personal responsibility for the
harm inflicted. For example, John might feel
guilt if he knowingly and unjustifiably failed
to hire a person because of his/her race or
ethnicity rather than the merit of that par-
ticular applicant.
Importantly, guilt can be distinguished
from simple fear of punishment by external
sources. People could be afraid that their
actions will lead to reprisal, but feel no guilt
for committing the act. Likewise, potential
judiciary decisions of guilt can be quite
removed from the emotional experience of
guilt. People do not necessarily feel guilt just
because others judge their actions to have
violated a moral standard. Guilt is predomi-
nantly experienced when responsibility is
accepted for action that is perceived to be
illegitimate, harmful to others, and deemed
to be within the person’s own control. By
contrast, shame (an emotion term that is
often used interchangeably with guilt) is
typically experienced for outcomes deemed
outside personal control and when made
The Encyclopedia of Peace Psychology, First Edition. Edited by Daniel J. Christie.
© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
public portrays the perpetrator as weak or
further, guilt is experienced when harm is
directed toward another person or persons,
whereas this is not a precondition for the
experience of shame. In shame, potential
loss of reputation and stature are para-
mount, whereas with guilt the harm inflicted
on another is focal. John might feel guilt for
illegitimately failing to hire a minority group
applicant when it was within his power to
do so, but shame if he believes others per-
ceive him to be a racist because of this
choice.
More generally, guilt has been conceptu-
alized as a self-conscious emotional state
that results when an actor causes, foresees
causing, or is linked with illegitimate harm.
As such, guilt is not restricted to events that
have already occurred, but may also include
anticipated negative events as well as past
negative events with which people believe
themselves to be associated. Thus, guilt is
relevant to a variety of daily experiences,
and is important for understanding moral
behavior and social cohesion.
Indeed, because moral standards are cul-
turally anchored, to feel guilt an individual
must internalize the morals of the society to
which they identify (Devine & Monteith,
1993). In this way, guilt is functional. It serves
as the social glue that binds members of a
society together by forcing people to pay
attention to how their behavior can nega-
tively affect others and subsequently feel
badly about their wrongful behavior. If guilt
was not experienced, people would care
little about the harm they inflict on other
people or their property. The anticipation of
feeling guilt is consequentially a motivating
factor to abstain from engaging in behavior
that violates normative standards. In effect,
2 guilt: personal and collective
guilt serves to effectively regulate social
behavior and facilitate peaceful coexistence
between individuals.
As a result of its role in social regulation,
guilt is often considered a higher-order,
social emotion. Whereas emotions such as
fear serve to initiate the fight or flight
response, guilt involves complex cognitive
processing that can motivate behavior
beyond the initial felt experience. Specifically,
after the initial harmful behavior occurs and
guilt is experienced, the person who com-
mitted the harm may begin to look for
ways that the harm can be repaired. The
means by which this repair is undertaken
can take many forms. People may apolo-
gize for the wrong committed, pledge to
change their behavior, provide financial
reparations for damages, or otherwise make
up for the harm done (Baumeister, Stillwell,
& Heatherton, 1994). (See apologies and
forgiveness.) There are times, however,
when there are no obvious means by which
reparation can be made. In the case of a
person who has discriminated against
someone based on group membership,
there may be no means to repair the harm
done to that particular harmed individual.
Even with no obvious route of repair for
that specific individual, guilt can still facili-
tate positive social behavior because a
person can always decide to refrain from
such harm-doing and behave differently in
the future when faced with a similar situa-
tion. To this end, guilt can be beneficial for
the facilitation and maintenance of positive
interpersonal relations.
COLLECTIVE GUILT
As anyone who is aware of world politics
knows, intense emotions can be elicited in
response to adversarial relations between
social groups (Branscombe & Doosje, 2004).
Importantly, emotions such as guilt elicited
by salient intergroup inequality depend
primarily on belonging to the social group
that has perpetrated harm on another group,
and not necessarily on individual actions.
Therefore, feelings of guilt can arise not
only due to personal behavior that violates
social norms, but may also result from the
behavior of other members of one’s group.
For example, European Americans may feel
guilt for the historical enslavement of African
Americans. European Americans who feel
guilty for the harm done to African
Americans do not necessarily experience
guilt for harm that they have committed per-
sonally, but rather they feel collective guilt
because they perceive members of their own
group as having committed illegitimate
harm against members of another group.
Thus, negative events that elicit collective
guilt are ones in which the victim and per-
petrator are perceived as members of social
groups, rather than individuals (Branscombe,
2004).
Although some have argued that in the
absence of personal responsibility a person
should not feel guilt for harmful behaviors
committed by others, the reality is that
people can and do feel collective guilt. This
is because part of people’s sense of self is
derived from the groups to which they per-
ceive themselves as belonging. Just as events
for which the personal self is responsible can
elicit emotions such as guilt, appraisal of
events that involve a person’s group can like-
wise trigger such emotions based on the col-
lective self. In order to experience collective
guilt, people must perceive themselves as
members of a social group that has illegiti-
mately harmed another social group
(Branscombe, 2004). The potential for col-
lective guilt is not restricted to instances of
historical injustices. It can also be experi-
enced for harmful behavior one’s own group
is currently committing. Indeed, awareness
of a wide range of contemporary inter-
group inequalities may elicit collective guilt.
Although John might not hold prejudicial
attitudes toward minority groups and has

not personally discriminated against them,
collective guilt might still be experienced if
he perceives his group as routinely engaging
in discriminatory hiring practices against
minority group members.
The factors that lead group members to
feel collective guilt for historical or contem-
porary harm toward members of other
groups are not unlike those required for the
experience of personal guilt. In addition to
acknowledging the self to be a member of
a group that has illegitimately harmed
another group, group members must hold
their group responsible for the harm done.
In the absence of perceived ingroup respon-
sibility, little collective guilt will be experi-
enced. Because it is unpleasant to believe
one’s group has illegitimately harmed
another social group, various strategies can
be employed to deflect ingroup responsibil-
ity for the harm inflicted (Wohl, Branscombe,
& Klar, 2006). One strategy group members
use to reduce ingroup responsibility is to
shift the focus of attention from the ingroup
to the outgroup. For example, inequality
and discrimination can be framed in terms
of the advantages experienced by the
ingroup (e.g., occupying well-paying jobs) or
the disadvantages experienced by the out-
group (e.g., occupying poor-paying jobs). By
shifting focus, the harm committed becomes
more about “them” and less about what
“we” did, which reduces the likelihood that
collective guilt will be experienced (Powell,
Branscombe, & Schmitt, 2005). Group
members can also blame the outgroup for
the harm its members experience in order to
reduce feelings of collective guilt. The Nazis,
for instance, blamed much of Germany’s ills
on the Jews. By doing so, Germans could feel
less responsible for the harm they inflicted.
Ingroup responsibility can be also under-
mined to the extent that the harm commit-
ted is seen as isolated in a few deviant
ingroup members and not a reflection on
the ingroup as a whole. By psychologically
isolating the wrongdoers from the group,
guilt: personal and collective 3
the ingroup as a whole can be shielded from
responsibility.
Importantly, even when responsibility is
accepted, this does not guarantee that group
members will feel collective guilt. In addi-
tion to acceptance of responsibility, group
members must also perceive that the
ingroup’s harmful actions toward the out-
group were illegitimate. In particular, collec-
tive guilt requires that people perceive that
their group violated a moral standard
coupled with a belief that there is no justifi-
cation for having done so. Because people
are motivated to see their ingroup in a posi-
tive light, collective guilt is often under-
mined by legitimization processes. One
means by which members can legitimize
their group’s actions is by arguing that the
ingroup was simply responding to the
harmful behavior perpetrated by the out-
group. That is, the ingroup was forced to
commit harm in response to the aggressive
actions initiated by the outgroup. Although
responsibility is accepted for the harm the
ingroup inflicted, that harm is justified as a
means of protecting the ingroup from an
aggressive outgroup. Accordingly, deroga-
tion and harm to an outgroup can be seen
as a legitimate response to the threat posed
by the outgroup (Wohl et al., 2006).
Because of the many strategies people
have for preventing and undermining feel-
ings of collective guilt, it may be an emotion
that is experienced relatively infrequently.
When it is experienced though, group
members must come to grips with the fact
that their group has violated agreed-upon
moral standards. People want to believe that
the groups to which they belong are good,
especially those who feel a strong sense of
connection to their ingroup. Collective guilt
undermines these perceptions, thus leaving
group members to question the positivity of
their ingroup. However, it is precisely the
motivation to see the ingroup in a positive
light and alleviate feelings of collective guilt
that can lead group members to repair the
4 guilt: personal and collective
wrongs their group has inflicted on another
group.
By correcting wrongs committed by the
ingroup, group members can once again
perceive their group to be moral. Just as per-
sonal guilt is associated with the desire to
take corrective action, so too does collective
guilt motivate group members to restore
justice and make amends for their group’s
harmful behavior. Indeed, collective guilt
has been found to predict support for affirm-
ative action policies, financial reparations,
and the desire for group leaders to offer a
public apology to groups that have been vic-
timized by the ingroup (e.g., Canadian and
Australian governmental apologies to their
respective Native populations for the forced
displacement and years of discrimination
endured).
It should be noted, however, that simply
feeling collective guilt might not be suffi-
cient to elicit support for reparative action.
Group members must feel they are effica-
cious with regard to bringing about change.
If repair is seen to be especially difficult to
achieve, then the need to restore justice
might be outweighed by the perceived diffi-
culty of doing so. Perhaps counterintuitively,
if correcting the harm done is seen as rela-
tively easy to accomplish, then the intensity
of collective guilt may be also low and
thereby undermine any motivation to repair
the wrongs that have been committed by the
ingroup. Compensatory action is most likely
to occur when the importance of restoring
justice is high, and the effort needed to
restore justice is feasible, but not so difficult
that it outweighs the value of repairing
the wrongs committed (Schmitt, Miller,
Branscombe, & Brehm, 2008).
The collective guilt that national and
ethnic groups experience for the harm com-
mitted against other groups may be critical
for changing the nature of intergroup rela-
tions and the quest for peace and justice. It
is when immoral and unjust behavior is con-
fronted that guilt is experienced, be it per-
sonal or group-based. By experiencing guilt,
moral standards and the desire to adhere to
those standards are reinforced.
SEE ALSO: Apologies and Forgiveness.
REFERENCES
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Branscombe, N. R., & Doosje, B. (Eds).
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