Upon receiving a low grade on an L2 writing assignment, for instance, a shamed learner might think “If and only if I was not such a poor L2 writer.”

– Differential Roles of Shame and Guilt in L2 Learning: How Bad is Bad?

When we say “If that match had been scratched, it would have lighted”, we mean that conditions are such-i.e., the match is well made, is dry enough, oxygen enough is present, etc.-that “That match lights” can be inferred from “That match is scratched.”

– The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals

To the extent that children need clearly defined boundaries to develop into well rounded individuals primed for self-actualisation, their daily lived experience is ineludibly tied to conditions within intricate frameworks of reward and punishment.

Even if they cannot recite the rules of if clauses, children are on some level very acquainted with the structure of conditionals. For example, they know how the first conditional operates; “If I finish my homework now, I will be able to put it out of my mind later.” The first conditional relates to predictions made on an understanding of obvious and likely cause-effect pairs and in cases like the given example, probably does good.

The second and third conditionals though, which students indulge in perhaps more often, might do more bad than good. The second conditional relates to imaginary, unreal and unlikely (to someone’s mind) situations in the future; “If I were more X (some quality), I would be/get more Y (some reward).” This is being wistful or wishful (again in someone’s self-estimation). One person’s wishful thinking might be a legitimate goal for someone else who fully intends to see it through, come hell or high water.

The third conditional, relating to conditions which can no longer be fulfilled to achieve the consequent effect, is potentially insidious; “If I had worked harder, I would have gotten the score I needed and I would have gotten into the school I wanted and I would have been more worthy and I would have been very happy and everything would have been just right in the world.” This line of thinking drains, debilitates, depresses and is in a way, no different from wishful thinking inherent in the second conditional and in the view of the one who coined, ‘counterfactual conditional’, neither logical nor useful in arriving at any applicable truth.

‘Wishful thinking’ according to its Wikipedia page refers to “formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality or reality”.The third conditional potentially encourages formation of beliefs based on what might be painful to imagine. If the second conditional builds castles in the air, the third builds dungeons under the ground. One adds imagined gains to the ledger and the other adds imagined losses. Both relate to unverifiable hypotheses, have little practical purpose but also give rise to real consequences.

Two such consequences are the sometimes correlated but distinct emotions of guilt and shame. A 2018 study found language learners very regularly experience both. The researcher went to great lengths to show qualitatively the difference and concluded, largely in line with previous findings that guilt has a positive effect on achievement while shame has a negative effect.

According to researchers, guilt focuses on having done something wrong, crystallises debt on the conscience of the wrong doer towards the one(s) he has wronged and results in reparative efforts to make restitution or at least satisfy debt through some version of ‘pay it forward’. Carlsmith and Gross (1969) found subjects were more inclined to be agreeable to someone who had observed them doing wrong to someone else. Ketelaar and Au (2003) found “guilt increases cooperation”. Presumably, guilt arises from third conditional type reasoning. “If I had been more careful, I would have gotten this right. I was not careful. Now, I have let myself and others down. I need to make amends and be better than this. Let me work at this.” Alternatively, “If I had been more careful, I would have gotten this right. People are rightly upset. Let me make up for this by being more nice than usual to the next person who comes along.”

Shame has been described to be more painful than guilt because it attaches judgement to one’s self rather than on one’s behaviour as in the case of guilt. A person experiencing shame “has shown to be inadequate and feels worthless and inferior compared to others” (Hooge & Breugelmans, 2007). While guilt begins with “If I had not done X”, shame begins with “If I were/was more/less X”. The typical reaction to shame is not an effort to make good but to shift blame to be rid of the intense, painful feeling of shame by externalising the cause. The subject of the third conditional is now someone or something else; “If you had woken me up on time, I would have reached on time and would not have experienced this, that and the other thing”. Researchers appear agreed that shame, unlike guilt, does not lead to self-improvement.

As with everything else, guilt too must be useful only at the right degree and only when experienced after a clear-eyed post-mortem. The concept of degree could be understood with Portia’s famous declaration, “Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh. But in the cutting it if thou dost shed one drop … thy lands and goods are by the laws of Venice confiscate unto the state of Venice.” Of course, we cannot discount the possibility that if an officious bystander had been there at the time the bargain between Shylock and Antonio was struck and suggested to them, the payment of a pound of flesh would necessarily entail the shedding of blood, they might have gone, “Oh, of course!”. And while we are engaging in the business of what might have been or third conditionals, we could as well imagine some other world in which Antonio seeks to vary or remove the onerous term.

Another way to understand degree is to refer to Aristotle who wrote, “Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody’s power, that is not easy.”

Accepting guilt is to acknowledge debt. Given how even mundane events can be shown to have been born out of complex interaction between multivariate factors, it is difficult to pin any real hope on the role of guilt in improving outcomes.

If it isn’t apparent it was because of what one did and only because of what one did, that the outcome was this and not that, it might be better to chill till things become clearer.

The Brain Dojo