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Shame and guilt are unpleasant emotions that most people try to avoid, but might they have value?

A new study tests whether these emotions promote morality vs. harm your self-concept.

By considering the results of your actions and taking responsibility, you can become a more empathic person.

It’s impossible to go through life without doing something you regret. The uncomfortable feelings of guilt and shame often follow such mishaps. Jody felt terrible after blurting out a secret her partner told her in the presence of her partner’s family. Now, her partner refuses to speak to her, an understandable reaction. Jody is so overwhelmed with a combination of guilt and shame that she doesn’t know what to do. Maybe she should shove aside those feelings and move on, assuming (and hoping) that her partner will eventually forgive her.

The Adaptive Value of Guilt and Shame

According to a new study by Tsuinghua University’s Wenting Mu and colleagues (2026), some people are more prone to experience these feelings than others, reflecting enduring qualities that are the “affective core of important personality traits.” Furthermore, these reactions are “fundamental to moral functioning within social contexts” (p. 310). In other words, some people go from day to day constantly wondering what they've done wrong. This can make them miserable in the short term but better in the long term, as their sensitivity to harming others will bode well for the quality of their relationships.

One issue in deciding about the value of these trait-like propensities is deciding on how to distinguish between them. Shame comes from the realization that you’re a flawed human being and guilt from the awareness of flaws in your actions. A major problem in prior studies results from trying to separate these qualities through statistical methods before seeing how they relate to other aspects of personality........

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