We hope you enjoy our articles. Please note, we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. Thank you if you use our links, we really appreciate it!
The well-known distinction between “shame-cultures” and “guilt cultures” was popularized by anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s 1946 book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword but her theory has, since then, suffered from its perception as culturally biased and simplistic. Benedict wrote the book during World War Two and to some extent used this distinction to extol the moral superiority of Western “guilt cultures” over that of Asian “shame cultures”. Since this initial thesis was advanced however, the basic idea has refused to go away, and has persistently reemerged in sociological, social psychological, and moral psychological research, with new and less biased methods and results.
Defined simply, the shame culture/guilt culture designation denotes two respective types of moral psychology that shape the ethical ethos of a society: Shame cultures place moral importance on the outward behaviors, social roles, and community perception of its members, to evoke the experience of public shame as a response to moral transgression. Guilt cultures place more emphasis on inward feelings, self-appraisal, and internalized standards of ethical conduct to evoke the experience of personal guilt as a response to moral transgression. Public disgrace, dishonor, and ostracization are the worst consequence of moral failure in shame cultures, while inner-torment, angst and self-loathing are the worst consequence of moral failure in guilt cultures. In epic literary traditions for instance, perceived disrespect and disregard for proper social roles and resulting moral condemnation between the Mahabaratas’ Pandavas family and Kauravas family , or between the Illiad’s Athenian King Agamenmnon and Trojan warrior Achilles, led to profound public shame and ultimately to war in the shame-oriented cultural contexts in which these stories were written; while failure to live up to personal standards of moral rectitude, led the Biblical Job and Shakespeare’s Hamlet to inner turmoil and tragedy in the guilt-oriented cultural contexts from which these stories derived.
Benedict’s own description of these cultures reveals her war-era bias:
“A society that inculcates absolute standards of morality and relies on men’s developing a conscience is a guilt culture by definition….In a culture where shame is a major sanction…so long as a man’s behavior ‘does not get out into the world’ he need not be troubled…true shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin….Shame requires an audience. Guilt does not.”
Though simplistic as reductive categories, her comparative appraisal of shame cultures in comparison to guilt cultures –and subsequent research based on her work– nonetheless reveals some important characteristics that characterize such societies. As Benedict noted, “relational” societies (for example, classical East Asian civilizations like Japan and China, influenced by Confucian moral psychology) tend to often view interpersonal relationships as key to personal identity and, hence, to moral responsibility. A person’s sense of ‘self’ and moral obligations are determined by the nature his or her social roles and relationships with others. A person’s character is thus a matter of how s/he fulfills family-professional-social functions and how s/he is perceived by the community in this regard. This standard of moral appraisal is therefore relatively shame-oriented. Many Western societies in contrast, view the kind of individuated “ego” (an isolated, self-directed individual), described with particular clarity by thinkers like Freud and Kohlberg, as the locus of identity and moral responsibility. Persons are regarded as individuated entities, with private thoughts and characters, separate from the particular psycho-social environment in which they live, who are ultimately responsible for their own moral stature. Their standard of moral assessment is therefore guilt-oriented. For this reason, shame-oriented societies locate morality in changing, relational, situational family and social roles and demands, while guilt-oriented societies see internalized personal ethical principles as the source of moral integrity, and measure morality in terms of the ego’s success in conforming to these principles. In shame-oriented societies, one’s moral status is determined by his/her status in the community and family (eg; a good parent, capable administrator, loyal servant, etc.). In guilt-oriented cultures moral-standing is weighed by fidelity to internalized ethical standards (eg; possible self-criticism and angst over possible failure to be a ‘good person’). Thus, in the stories above, Achilles’ moral worth was assessed via his shame-oriented community standing as a celebrated warrior, while Job’s moral worth involved his guilt-oriented self-critique over the extent to which he had/had not lived-up to self-imposed moral imperatives.
Certainly, cultures that foster a relational sense of self-identity aren’t solely shame-oriented and completely non-guilt-oriented, just as they are never exclusively relational as opposed to individualistic. Confucianism, for example, stresses the importance of internal self-cultivation and personal responsibility along with filial devotion and adherence to public roles. Similarly, individualist cultures also consider social relationships to be integral to personal development and identity. Western moral-psychology from Plato to Freud, for example, emphasized the importance of psycho-social environments along with the development of personal ethics, in the cultivation of healthy individuals within them.
Still, the respective cultural moral orientations emerging from these contrasting (Guilt/Shame) conceptions of selfhood are different in significant ways, and this difference seems inevitable, given the dynamics through which moral accountability is shaped. If a person is viewed largely as a psychologically isolated and autonomous agent, as emphasized by Western philosophy and psychology, then inward guilt would be the most acute consequence of moral transgression. If a personal identity is viewed as an interpersonal matrix of human-environmental relationships, as prescribed by Asian philosophy and psychology, then Western-type individualism becomes much less important, and shame evoked by lack of fidelity to the relationships that comprise one’s identity would be the most salient consequence of moral transgression. Study after study in comparative east Asian/Western moral psychology has reaffirmed this tendency, Nisbett’s “The Geography of Thought” being a landmark example.
To these other two cultural categories, anthropologist Eugene Nida later added the category of “fear culture”, which denotes cultures in which moral probity is secured by fear or coercion. Strict authoritarian police states, rigid professional bureaucracies, oppressive theocracies, or cloistered cults, would be examples of such societies. The plight of protagonist Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 illustrates the kind of moral psychology at work in fear cultures.
However, even more interesting than examples of guilt /shame/fear cultures as individual institutions perhaps, are examples of societies comprised of all three elements—often hierarchically. Plato’s classical conception of a utopian community consisted of three psycho-social dimensions: a merchant class driven by desire for personal wealth, an administrative-military class driven by ambition for social success and imposing the rule of law on the merchant class , and then a ruling class of philosopher-scholars driven by yearning for personal wisdom and directing the entire course of the community’s development. Similar examples from classical thought can be found in the philosophy of ancient Hindu social caste, which prescribed a social hierarchy much like Plato’s: merchant -laboring castes of Vaisyas-Sudras , an administrative-warrior caste of Kshartriyas, and a priestly ruling caste of Brahmins. Medieval feudal society in the West also implemented this kind of hierarchy, with a priest-scholar class guiding the aristocratic-military rulers, who imposed order on a merchant-laboring class in turn.
Within the guilt-shame-fear framework, these classical social orders can be envisioned as exemplifying all Benedict’s and Nida’s qualities hierarchically. Their social class hierarchies are sustained by guilt-shame-fear all at once: the ruling scholar-priest-philosopher class valuing internal, abstract ethical standards and motivated morally by a guilt-orientation, the administrative-military class valuing relational, community roles and motivated by a shame-orientation, and the merchant-laboring class valuing material self-interest, personal security, and motivated by a fear-orientation. Indeed, in our contemporary world, professions and cultures whose standard of success is abstract knowledge (scholars, clergy, jurists) will tend to also value abstract ethical principles, and are likely to be morally motivated by their perception of relative guilt or ethical propriety. Professions and cultures whose standard of success is the achievement of awards and titles (athletes, lawyers, soldiers) will tend to value socially recognized awards and status, and are likely to be motivated by their perception of relative shame and honor in this way. Professions and cultures whose standard of success is material possessions and personal security (laborers, salesmen, merchants) will tend to value wealth and security and are likely to be motivated by their perception of relative fear and contentment.
With the advent of modern, secular cultures over the past century or so, the hierarchical divisions that characterized ancient and medieval civilizations gradually blurred, dissolved, and collapsed into a more socially egalitarian, and politically democratic milieu. The locus of political and moral authority is more horizontal than vertical and arises from the ground-up rather than from the top-down (in the form of democratic societies and communities that value social equality). As thinkers from Weber to Freud to Foucault have explored in various ways, guilt, shame, and fear have largely been eliminated as external forms of socio-economic control (through things like formal rules, laws, and social class systems), and internalized via psycho-social influence and control strategies in our now (relatively) classless contemporary society (through things like advertising, educational training, and social status), which then sustain the very social order that generates them. The contemporary working-class ‘citizen’ is an amalgam of potential guilt from the mores shaped by education and family, potential shame from the role models inculcated by popular and social media, and perpetual fear of professional and financial failure.
Thus Benedict’s initially somewhat ill-conceived categories may nonetheless serve as an illuminating guide for contemporary researchers seeking to understand more deeply the psycho-social dynamics that continue to underwrite our post-modern, post-industrial global civilization.
