I hit on this psychological concept this morning on accident. I had to wake up all three of my kids and get them going this morning. They were not happy about the prospect. As I went through the traditional struggle of trying to motivate my children to get into gear and get going, I had a through come to me that I have never considered before. Humans play this game of transferring guilt back and forth to each other. In fact the more I considered the practical application of the topic, the more I realized that I am doing it, and many others around me are as well. I have also noticed a few people in my life that are very good at blocking the transfer of guilt. Let me explain using an example.
Someone asks you to do something. Perhaps a parent asking to do a chore, or a boss asking you to fulfill a task, or a spouse asking you to do something around the house. The task at hand does not matter. Just think of one. At the moment you have a choice. You can do the task right now or delay the task until later. Most the time we will delay the task until later. We at that point hold the guilt for not doing that task. We have a certain tolerance for guilt. The person who asked us may remind us, nag us, beg us to complete the task. Eventually we are going to have to do it, or figure out a way not to do it. If we choose not to do it, then our first inclination is to transfer the guilt for not accomplishing what we were asked.
There are a myriad of ways in which we attempt guilt transfer. The most dominate way is to accuse the person asking us for not providing the appropriate instruction, resources, or other important requirement for completing the task. We attempt to transfer the guilt of not completing the task back to the person who assigned it by pointing to external factors that the person asking should have solved for. This relieves us of our guilt and places is back to the person asking. My wife calls this the accumulation of mommy guilt. Mom’s feel bad for not doing enough for their children. So of course the children learn this over time, so when they fail at something they become adept at transferring responsibility back to mom. Thus the perpetual accumulation of mommy guilt.
There are other ways we transfer guilt. Many times we would not dare to directly transfer the guilt back to the originating source, so we would rather find a scapegoat. Another sibling perhaps, a co-worker, and external factor. I have noticed that some people use a scapegoat almost automatically when confronted. They immediately and quickly transfer guilt to another party. When they were children, they must have had siblings and became experts at confusing and befuddling mom with tactics of quickly blaming the others. That may work in some families, in some families the mom might just beat the hell out of all of them just to make sure she got the guilty party! I imagine at the root of every guilt avoidance tactic is the way that a person dealt with the assignments of tasks from their parents as a child.
I had some fun with this, analyzing where people had done this to me and where I had done this myself this last week. I laughed at the guilt transfer path that things took. In one case, I was asking someone why a particular action had not happened. That person blamed a scapegoat, another employee. I went and talked to that employee and that employee explained how I had not provided enough resources to accomplish the job. Thus the guilt for the unfinished task came right back and landed in my lap. I wanted to someone to take responsibility, the other people did not want to, so they left the job unfinished and justified it by transferring the guilt! To complete the story, I then got asked about the action from someone superior to me. I immediately blamed another team, not my own. Thus, I transferred the guilt away from me! The vicious cycle!
Then this analysis got personal, which is why I am blogging about it. I looked at my response to things that I know I should be doing and improving on. Sure enough, I was excusing myself from feeling guilty about not doing these things because I was blaming others, blaming factors out of my control. Transferring the guilt. The problem with guilt transference is that you do not improve as a result. You feel less guilty, congratulations, but you are not better as a person. In fact the only real effective way to remove guilt is one of two methods outlined here:
1. Just do it. Decide to accept responsibility and figure out what you need to do and get the task or requirement completed. Maybe it is not a single task, then make it an objective and create a program that you can follow to continuously improve at it. Accomplishing something is the best way to remove guilt, because you have nothing to feel guilty about.
2. Just say no. Do not accept the task or the responsibility in the first place. Explain to the person that asks that you cannot accomplish this because there are other priorities and your plate is full. This is a bold approach. Perhaps the person asking will help to rearrange your priorities so that you can then say yes, but the point is that you are not going to accept guilt to just then transfer it later. Deal with it right away and then there is no transfer.
We spend a lot of energy and time shuffling guilt around to each other. Perhaps a healthy and vibrant culture, family and person is one who recognizes this and either accepts responsibility right away or is good at being clear when they are unable, unwilling to accept responsibility. I have never considered the lack of performance improvement in terms of the “guilt debt” that is being transferred around an organization. Perhaps as the guilt debt becomes so high, everyone starts to get bogged down by transferring it around to each other. Stop the madness, either accept responsibility or say no.
Guy Reams
