Fuelled by the relief of having finished end-of-year exams, the pleasure of a warm late spring evening and quite a lot 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 – Cambridge – and too far to walk, and, anyway, there was a car, temptingly, in the driveway, its keys in the ignition.
Somebody – Moore can’t remember who – suggested they drive back, and with the recklessness of youth and too much beer, they all got in. “I ended up in the front passenger seat and fell asleep,” 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’t know until the next day, in hospital after surgery, was that they had driven into a cyclist and killed him.
“I felt this incredible shock, that mass combination of emotions, obviously the horror of what had happened,” he says. “The massive regret of what we’d done.” He was also fearful of what it meant for him and the people he loved – what would his parents think? “There isn’t a simple story in terms of what the emotions were. It was just a roiling mass of different negative emotions. That’s why I think of guilt as being complex, because all of these other emotions were tied into it.”
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‑year career as a psychology researcher. His argument is that while guilt is a painful emotion to experience, it’s ultimately helpful – at its heart it functions as a drive to repair relationships, between individuals but also societies. “I wanted to give guilt a makeover in terms of its reputation. We often think of guilt as not a nice thing, because it’s painful and ugly, and I wanted to show why it’s 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.”
Guilt, he thinks, is not its own emotion, but a combination of others that are, he says, “perhaps more basic. So there’s anxiety, which is the fear that our relationships, or something we care about, has been harmed in some way. There’s compassion, sadness or empathy that we feel for the person we might have hurt, and there’s anger at ourselves for what we may have done. Those emotions can be mixed in different concentrations.” If self-directed anger dominates, “that can bleed into shame, which is the idea that you’re a bad person, not just that you did a bad thing. That tends to make you shy away from relationships rather than try to heal them.” In healthy guilt, those emotions are more balanced. “You 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.”
Even before the accident, Moore was familiar with guilt. He grew up in Surrey, the middle child of three in a Catholic family. “I was an overscrupulous kid when it came to religion,” he says. He remembers saying his nightly prayers before bed, and if his mind drifted and he hadn’t concentrated fully on each word, he would repeat the prayer again and again. “That was stimulated by the guilt about not doing it properly and therefore damaging my relationship with God,” 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.
“It was about fear for myself,” he says, “but that was combined with anger at myself.” There was also, looking back as an adult, “some compassion for harming God. I felt that empathy – Christ went so far for me and I can’t 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.”
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, “I did, unfortunately, get sidetracked by other pursuits and a lot of drinking, and not great behaviour”. Being part of a group that took someone’s car and drove drunk, was clearly stupid and a catastrophic mistake but, back then, not entirely out of character.
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.
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 – the first time he had experienced this from them. Their reaction was “hugely important”, he says. “I 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.”
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. “It was incredible for them to be at my bedside and explicitly say: ‘We forgive you.’ Their approach was that only God can judge, and that our duty as Christians is to forgive.” What reassured him that it was within their gift – as opposed to the family of the young man they had killed – to forgive him? (Later, the family did write to Moore’s parents to offer their own forgiveness.) “At 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.”
It didn’t miraculously alleviate his guilt. “But an important part of it had been relieved. I’m not trying to say I had a right not to feel guilty any more. All I’m doing is reflecting on how the psychology of it works, how what people do within relationships or social interaction affects how we feel.”
He writes that in the first few weeks after the accident, he couldn’t 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. “I was incredibly lucky, because if that had not happened, then there’s no question that guilt would have lingered for much longer and probably still would be affecting me significantly today.”
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. “He’s left it behind. For him it hasn’t, perhaps, stayed with him in the same way it stayed with me.”
Freud’s theory of guilt is that it starts in early childhood, based on a fear of losing the love of one’s caregiver, and that conscience develops as a self-punishing way of controlling one’s 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’s distress. This informed Moore’s own thinking.
As parents, we can encourage our children to have a healthier relationship to guilt by encouraging empathy. “This approach uses what we sometimes call guilt induction,” says Moore (what many of us might think of as a “guilt trip”). “Imagine a child has done something mean to a playmate, and the parent says: ‘Look how you made Johnny feel, look how you made Johnny cry.’ You’re 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.” If the parent punishes the child instead, “that makes them feel bad about themselves, [think] they’re a bad person, and the argument is that’s going to be less conducive to repairing relationships”.
When does a guilt trip become damaging? “The question is whether you’re doing it for learning purposes versus trying to control the behaviour and trying to get more attention on you.” When children become teenagers, the danger can be that parents use guilt trips “to 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.”
Is parenting guilt inevitable? “I think it’s close to inevitable,” says Moore. “That doesn’t mean it has to be damaging, it just means you’re likely to feel it. Keep in mind that I’m thinking of guilt through the lens that it’s a positive emotion. It feels bad, but it’s 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 – whether they don’t breastfeed, too much screen time, all of the ways in which you parent.” Being a working parent is likely to create guilt. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. It just means you’re sensitive to the needs of your child. That’s why guilt arises, not because you’re doing a bad job.” People with pets, especially those with dogs, appear to experience similar parental guilt.
Why do I feel guilty when I walk past a police officer, even though I’ve done nothing wrong? “I do, too, but not because of my past,” says Moore. “This is the funny thing about the human mind: [seeing a police officer is] a stimulus to the things that you might have done wrong. That’s 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 – our conscience. The set of rules that make up our conscience is never complete, there’s always a chance that there’s something else we need to pay attention to.” Seeing a police officer may be a subconscious reminder of that, he says.
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. “If guilt is about trying to manage your relationships and make sure they’re healthy, then women are going to feel more guilt.”
As a society, individuals appear to be becoming more isolated and self-centred. Might this lead to less guilt? It isn’t 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. “We are ultimately a social species; we wouldn’t 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’s about the relationships that we have or should have.”
How should people alleviate their own guilt? If you’re feeling guilty because you’ve harmed someone, then a genuine apology and an attempt at reparation is vital, says Moore. “For relationships to be healed, both sides have to want to heal it. Guilt is what motivates the one who’s done harm to try to seek forgiveness. Then, I think, 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.” If there is a pattern of harm, he adds, this may not be the case.
If the guilt arises from something long ago, or where it would be impossible to make amends, self‑forgiveness, says Moore, “is really the route to healing”. He stresses he is not a therapist, but one way that might help is to “step outside yourself and look at yourself from a third‑person perspective. Imagine you were the person you’d harmed, and that you had received the acts of reparation or apology that you provided – would you forgive that person? Would you forgive yourself for what you’ve 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.” Some people, he adds, are over-conscientious “and they tend to be very guilt-prone. I think being aware of one’s conscience and the role that it plays in guilt is important, because then you can say: ‘Maybe it’s being unreasonable here.’”
Moore was forgiven – not just by his parents and friends, and those affected by his part in that awful night, but by wider society. After a year’s 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. “And that seems, to me, to be overly harsh.” This can disproportionately affect certain groups – 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.
Should there be more guilt in the world? I’m thinking of politicians who inflict war on others, or whose decisions mean millions of people suffer as a result. “I think there should be a recognition of what guilt is and what it’s for,” says Moore. “I think there should be more attempts to keep our relationships strong, whether those relationships are at the individual level, or whether they’re 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.”
Within the criminal justice system, Moore thinks restorative justice should play a bigger role, “because it puts relationships at the heart, and says that crime is an offence against individuals, but also the community, and we need to think how we restore those relationships in society”.
The idea of collective guilt is a current one. In the global Black Lives Matter movement, the idea of “white guilt” reached the mainstream, although many activists argue it is unproductive. “You may feel [white guilt] for the wrong reasons,” says Moore. “Let’s say you know you’re not being progressive enough for your ‘in’ group, and you feel guilt about that, and that leads to virtue signalling and so on.”
Collective guilt can also place too much emphasis on individuals, rather than the group. In the case of the UK’s role in slavery, and the question of reparations, the argument that individual Britons alive today weren’t involved, and therefore shouldn’t feel guilt, is weak. “You’re saying, for the purposes of this issue: ‘I’m not part of the group, I’m an individual, and I had no responsibility for it.’ 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.” It’s not easy to resolve, Moore acknowledges. “I don’t 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.”
Ultimately it comes back to healing relationships, whether individually or at societal level. “I really like to take a relationship-first approach to things. I don’t 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’s to my daughter or my wife, my colleagues or friends or whatever, that’s 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’t want to make myself a better person; I want to make my relationships better.”
It’s not obvious from my laptop screen, but Moore has scars on his forehead from when he hit his head in the accident – he points to his left temple. Is that a daily reminder? “I’m still aware of it, obviously, but I don’t think about that event every day. The message that I want to get across is that, to some extent, anybody can do really stupid things and damaging things to other people.” For most people, he adds, “there should be a path of forgiveness and reconciliation; that’s really the message”.
Has he spent his life trying to make up for it? To prove he is a “good” person after all? No more than anyone else trying to be a good person, he says. Because of that crucial week in hospital – when Moore was offered forgiveness by his family and one of the victims of the accident – “I didn’t come out of it with shame. I didn’t think I was a bad person. I thought I was, at the time, a stupid person. I’d done a stupid thing, drunk too much, agreed to get in a car that wasn’t ours, with somebody who was not capable of driving. But it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.”
More than 40 years on, does Moore still feel guilty about the accident? “There were different sources of guilt attached to different relationships that had potentially been harmed. So with my parents, I don’t feel any guilt, because they gave me their forgiveness. I don’t feel guilt in relation to my friends. I don’t 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’m at is that because I was offered forgiveness, it’s my responsibility to accept that forgiveness.” He does still feel guilt, he adds. “But not nearly as strong as what I felt at the time.”
