SURVEY

We conducted a cross-sectional web-based survey from May 2019 to April 2020 in Germany. For an overview of the conducted survey, see also Luck and Luck-Sikorski (2022). Consumerfieldwork GmbH, an independent fieldwork agency providing an actively managed proprietary online panel of registered users for research purposes (http://www.consumer-fieldwork.com/index.htm), supported the recruitment of participants. Eligible participants (inclusion criteria: age 18 years or older; having experienced feelings of guilt at least once in the lifetime) completed the survey on a secure web-based survey platform (SoSci Survey; https://www.soscisurvey.de/en/index).

Information on the study aims, inclusion criteria, designated use of the collected data, data protection, time required to complete the survey, and contact information for queries was provided at the beginning of the survey before participants were asked to answer any questions. Additionally, at the beginning, it was clearly stated that completion of the survey was considered consent to participate in the survey and to provide the data for the stated research purposes.

The ethics committee of the University Hospital of Jena, Germany reviewed and approved the study (approval number: 2019-1334-Bef). The study also com-plies with the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

MEASURES

The survey included a standardized questionnaire on sociodemographic characteristics, feelings of guilt, depressive features, self-esteem, satisfaction with life, optimism, and pessimism. For this specific report on strategies for dealing with guilt, we analyzed collected data on participants’ age, gender, educational level, depressive features and answers regarding the following guilt-related questions:

(1) “Do you currently have feelings of guilt?” (yes/no)

(2) “Have you ever had feelings of guilt in the past?” (yes/no)

(3) “How are you dealing/how did you deal with your feelings of guilt? (i.e., What are/were your strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt?)” (open-ended question)

Depressive features were identified using the German version of the 9-item depression scale of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9; Kroenke et al., 2001; Löwe et al., 2004). The PHQ-9 total score ranges from 0 to 27 points. Higher scores on the PHQ-9 depression scale indicate a higher presence of depressive symptoms.

ANALYSIS

In the first step, we sifted the data and excluded data sets of all participants not fulfilling the inclusion criteria of being at least 18 years old and having experienced feelings of guilt at least once in the lifetime (answering “no” to both of the questions: “Do you currently have feelings of guilt?”; “Have you ever had feelings of guilt in the past?”) as well as of all participants with missing information on feelings of guilt/ strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt from further analyses.

In the second step, participants’ statements on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt were classified into categories. After a comprehensive review of the literature, we carefully decided to inductively classify the data, as there is no specific widely agreed taxonomy system for such guilt-related strategies. Additionally, we did not want to use an imperfectly fitting taxonomy system that may have a priori limited the view of the potential wide variety of different strategies, for example, by strongly summarizing potentially different strategies into predefined broad categories.

An important concept that may come to one’s mind when thinking about a possible taxonomy system for strategies for dealing with an emotion such as guilt, of course, may be the already stated coping concept. Over the past four decades, however, hundreds of different ways of coping and dozens of different coping taxonomy systems have been described (e.g., Carver & Connor-Smith, 2010; Skinner et al., 2003; Stanisławski, 2019), and there is also no widely agreed upon system. We therefore adhered to our decision to inductively classify the data. Nevertheless, by interpreting our results, we will strongly refer to well-known ways of coping.

When inductively classifying the different strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt, the two authors of this article first independently sifted the participants’ statements, each defining a set of categories for classification. Second, the two sets of categories were compared, and a joint consented set of categories was defined. Third, both researchers independently assigned the participants’ statements on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt to the joint set of categories. Fourth, the results of the categorization were compared and discussed until an agreement on all assignments was reached.

In the next step, the frequency of use of the strategies of the different defined categories was calculated (for the full analysis sample and gender- and age-specific).

To analyze potential associations between gender (female vs. male participants) and age (younger adulthood/18-34 years vs. middle adulthood/35-59 years vs. older adulthood/60+ years) and the use of strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt of the different defined categories, Cramér’s φ and Cramér’s V with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CI; estimated by using the bootstrap method with 1,000 samples) and p values (estimated by Monte-Carlo simulation with 10,000 samples) were calculated as appropriate.

To analyze potential differences in the overall number of strategies used for dealing with feelings of guilt between the gender and age groups, the Kruskal-Wallis H test with the Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc test for multiple pairwise comparisons was applied.

All analyses employed an alpha level for statistical significance of .05 (two-tailed). All statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 27.0.

SAMPLE

Altogether, N = 893 adults participated in the survey. Among these participants, n = 302 (33.82%) either did not fulfil the inclusion criterion of having experienced feelings of guilt at least once in the lifetime (n = 216/24.18%) or had missing information on feelings of guilt (missing information on reasons for feeling guilty or on strategies for dealing with the feelings or on both or missing information on feelings of guilt at all; n = 86/9.63%). Another n = 12 (1.34%) participants stated that they did not have any strategies at all for dealing with feelings of guilt, leaving a final analysis sample of N = 579 (64.84%) adults for the purposes of this report: n = 331 women (57.17%), n = 245 men (42.31%) and n = 3 adults (0.52%) without personal identification with a particular gender. The mean age of the sample was 45.45 years (SD = 16.45 years; median = 45 years; range = 18-84 years). The mean total score on the PHQ-9 depression scale was 6.83 points (SD = 4.91; range = 0-23; missing information for n = 1 participant/0.17%).

STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT – FULL SAMPLE

Altogether, we assigned 987 participants’ statements on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt to 34 defined categories (32 specific categories; one category (no. 33) referring to “Other, rarely stated strategies (each used by less than four participants)” and one category (no. 34) referring to “Unclear/ vaguely formulated strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt”). Table 1 provides an overview of these 34 strategy categories as well as corresponding examples of quotes by study participants.

As a result of the categorization process, each participant, on average, used 1.70 strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt (SD = 0.96, Me = 1.00; range = 1-6).

As shown in Table 2, participants used strategies that were most frequently assigned to the categories “Self-reflection; contemplation; analyzing/reviewing things one feels guilty about” (strategies used by n = 114 or 19.69% of the 579 participants), “Repressing/ignoring/(actively) forgetting/not thinking about/ bottling up the feelings of guilt” (n = 108, 18.65%), “Talking to someone about the feelings of guilt; asking someone for advice (other than the person(s) one is feeling guilty about)” (n = 105, 18.13%), “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/ broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrong-doings/associated feelings of guilt” (n = 98, 16.93%), “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/hope for forgiveness” (n = 69, 11.92%), and “Learning from things that happened for the future; (attempts of) acting differently” (n = 65, 11.23%). Thus, each of these six categories covered strategies that were used by more than 10% of the n = 579 participants of the full analysis sample.

STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT – ASSOCIATION WITH GENDER

Male participants, on average, used 1.60 (SD = 0.92), female participants used 1.78 (SD = 0.98), and participants without personal identification with a particular gender used 2.33 (SD = 1.15) different strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt. Only the difference in the number of strategies used between male and female participants was statistically significant (overall Kruskal-Wallis H test: χ² = 7.40, df = 2, p = .025; Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc test for multiple pairwise comparisons: male vs. female participants: p = .044; male participants vs. participants without a particular gender: p = .486; female participants vs. participants without a particular gender: p = .888).

In interpreting these results, however, it has to be kept in mind that only three adults without personal identification with a particular gender participated in the study. As shown in Table 2, these three participants used strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt in seven of the 34 defined categories. Three of the seven categories were among the above stated six categories, each covering strategies used by more than 10% of the full analysis sample: “Repressing/ignoring/(actively) forgetting/not thinking about/bottling up the feelings of guilt”, “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about, confession of/ broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrong-doings/associated feelings of guilt”, and “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/hope for forgiveness”.

The above stated six categories, each covering strategies used by more than 10% of all participants, also covered the strategies used most frequently by male and female participants (see Table 2). Female participants, in addition, frequently used strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt that were assigned to the category “Professional support/therapy/counseling” (covering statements on strategies of n = 35 or 10.57% of the 331 female participants vs. n = 9 or 3.67% of the 245 male participants). As shown in Table 2, the association between the use of strategies of this category and female gender was statistically significant (Cramér’s φ = .13, 95% CI [.05; .20], p = .001). The use of strategies of all other 33 categories was statistically independent of being either a man or a woman (see Table 2; due to their small number, adults without binary gender identification were not included in group comparison statistics).

STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT – ASSOCIATION WITH AGE

To analyze potential differences in the use of strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt of the 34 defined different categories with regard to age, we divided the full analysis sample of the n = 579 participants into three age groups: participants in younger adulthood (18-34 years; n = 212/36.61%), in middle adulthood (35-59 years; n = 219/37.82%) and in older adulthood (60+ years; n = 148/25.56%).

Participants aged 18-34 years, on average, used 1.95 (SD = 1.02), participants aged 35-59 years used 1.66 (SD = 0.93), and participants aged 60+ years used 1.42 (SD = 0.80) different strategies. All age-related differences in the number of strategies used were statistically significant (overall Kruskal-Wallis H test: χ2 = 35.85, df = 2, p < .001; Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc test for multiple pairwise comparisons: participants aged 35-59 vs. 18-34 years: p = .001; participants aged 60+ vs. 18-34: p < .001; participants aged 60+ vs. 35-59 years: p = .023).

Strategies of two of the above stated six categories covering strategies used by more than 10% of all participants were also frequently used by participants of all three age groups: “Self-reflection; contemplation; analyzing/reviewing things one feels guilty about” (age 18-34/35-59/60+ years = 20.75/19.18/18.92%) and “Repressing/ignoring/(actively) forgetting/not thinking about/bottling up the feelings of guilt” (age group 18-34/35-59/60+ years = 20.28/18.72/16.22%) (see Table 2). Strategies of the category “Talking to someone about the feelings of guilt; asking someone for advice (other than the person(s) one is feeling guilty about)” were used by more participants of the youngest age group, 18-34 years, than by participants of age groups 35-59 and 60+ years (28.77% vs. 15.98% vs. 6.08%; Cramér’s V = .23, p < .001). Significantly more participants of the youngest age group than of the two older age groups also used strategies of the categories “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt” (age group 18-34/35-59/60+ years = 25.94/12.79/10.14%; Cramér’s V = .19, p < .001), “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/hope for forgiveness” (age group 18-34/35-59/60+ years = 19.81/7.76/6.76%; Cramér’s V = .19, p < .001), and “Adhering to/accepting the believed moral transgressions/wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt” (age group 18-34/35-59/60+ years = 6.60/2.28/2.03%; Cramér’s V = .11, p = .029). Strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt covered by the category “Professional support/therapy/counseling”, by contrast, were used by significantly more participants of the two older age groups than of the younger one (age group 18-34/ 35-59/60+ years = 3.30/9.13/11.49%; Cramér’s V = .13, p = .008) (see Table 2). The use of strategies of all other 29 categories was statistically independent of age.

VARIETY OF STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT IN ADULTHOOD

As we assigned participants’ statements on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt to 34 different categories, it may be first and foremost concluded that adults indeed use a broad variety of different strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt.

Statements on strategies assigned to categories such as “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt”, “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/hope for forgiveness”, “Learning from things that happened for the future; (attempts of) acting differently”, “(Trying) to eliminate the underlying causes for the experienced feelings of guilt/to solve the underlying problems”, or “(Attempts of) reparation/making amends”, moreover, support conclusions of numerous previous studies that feelings of guilt can have important pro-social adaptive and reparative functions (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1995; Behrendt & Ben-Ari, 2012; Silfver, 2007).

Following the famous coping concept, such pro-social strategy categories – especially the latter three – may be additionally considered problem-focused coping, i.e., as a way of coping that is particularly used to manage or alter the problem causing distress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; many of the pro-social strategies may be specifically considered problem-focused active coping, i.e., as a “process of taking active steps to try to remove or circumvent the stressor or to ameliorate its effects”; Carver et al., 1989, p. 268).

Problem-focused coping may also refer to some of the strategies assigned to categories such as “Self-reflection; contemplation; analyzing/reviewing things one feels guilty about” (referring to those strategies that are used in the sense of the coping category planning; i.e., to strategies that are used to think about how to cope with a stressor; see Carver et al., 1989), “Talking to someone about the feelings of guilt; asking someone for advice (other than the person(s) one is feeling guilty about)” and “Professional support/therapy/counseling” (both categories referring to strategies that are used in the sense of the coping category seeking social support for instrumental reasons, i.e., to strategies that are used to seek advice, assistance, or information; see Carver et al., 1989). Some of the strategies assigned to these three categories, however, may also be considered emotion-focused coping as a way of coping that is particularly used to regulate emotional responses to the problem (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). More specifically, efforts of “Self-reflection; contemplation; analyzing/reviewing things one feels guilty about” may, for example, lead to positive reinterpretation or acceptance of things that happened (both are coping categories considered to be emotion-focused; see Carver et al., 1989) rather than to ideas on how to cope with a stressor. In addition, talking to someone – either a layperson or an expert – may be used for seeking social support for emotional reasons (also a coping category considered to be emotion-focused; see Carver et al. 1989) rather than for instrumental reasons. Even some of the participants’ statements on strategies assigned to the pro-social categories “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt” and “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/ hope for forgiveness” may be considered as examples of emotion-focused rather than problem-focused coping as the participants may have used these strategies for seeking social support for emotional reasons as well – in that case directly by the person(s) one feels guilty about (e.g., by getting sympathy or understanding; Carver et al., 1989).

Emotion-focused coping also seems to apply to many other of our defined strategy categories, such as “Repressing/ignoring/(actively) forgetting/not thinking about/bottling up the feelings of guilt” (corresponding to the emotion-focused coping category denial), “Self-exculpation; reattributing/cognitively restructuring/rationalizing things one feels guilty about; trying to put things in another perspective (e.g., by drawing comparisons with oneself or others)”, “Personal growth; life experience”, and “Looking on the bright side; focusing on positive aspects” (corresponding to the emotion-focused coping category positive reinterpretation and growth), “Adhering to/accepting the believed moral transgressions/ wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt” (corresponding to the emotion-focused coping category acceptance), and “Praying; going to confession; seeking comfort from religion/spirituality” (corresponding to the emotion-focused coping category turning to religion; see Carver et al., 1989).

When looking at the remaining strategy categories for dealing with feelings of guilt, many of them may be considered attempts of distracting and/or disengaging oneself from the feelings or the things that have caused the feelings, including categories such as “Distracting oneself”, “Going into one’s shell”, “Doing sports”, “Wait and see/Time heals all wounds” as well as “Going for a walk/on a hike/into nature”, “Sleeping”, and “Keeping distance to the person(s) one feels guilty about” (three of the other, rarely stated strategies; see category 33 in Tables 1 and 2). Even though strategies of such categories may also be used as some kind of emotion-focused coping, they are – by following once more the coping taxonomy of Carver et al. (1989) – often regarded as behavioral or mental disengagement. Others of our remaining strategy categories, such as “Allowing/bearing/living with the feelings of guilt; carrying the feelings of guilt around”, “Crying”, “Rage/anger”, and “Grief”, correspond to the coping category focus on and venting of emotions (see Carver et al., 1989). The latter three coping categories – behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement, and focus on and venting of emotions – are discussed as being “less useful” by Carver et al. (1989), as they, for example, may impede active coping in some cases. Adults with feelings of guilt who are particularly using these strategies to counter the feelings may also be at risk for such negative effects. However, returning to our thoughts stated in the introduction that individuals are not always able or capable (or willing) to undertake presumably more helpful actions (pro-social and/or problem-focused strategies) or individuals may undertake these actions successfully, but feelings of guilt may still be present, the use of alternative strategies (e.g., especially emotion-focused strategies but possibly also “less useful” strategies such as disengagement) is simply required and indeed may be helpful in some cases.

Some of the participants’ stated strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt can be considered harmful consequences rather than actual strategies, including for example those that have been assigned to categories such as “Consuming alcohol”, “Depression”, “Demeaning oneself; self-hate; self-punishment; self-harm”, or “Thoughts of suicide; suicide attempts”. It cannot be distinguished whether these statements reflect guilt itself or guilt as a symptom. Someone with depressive symptoms, for example, may feel guilty as part of the disease, but may falsely interpret the depressive symptoms as a result of feeling guilty, whereas it could be vice versa. Nevertheless, adults with feelings of guilt resulting in such consequences may be in particular need of professional help. As already stated in 2021 (Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2021a), potential treatment options in that case may be therapeutic approaches promoting forgiveness of self or self-compassion (Jung et al., 2019; Körner et al., 2015; PLoS One Staff, 2015), cognitive behavioral approaches targeting unpleasant feelings such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes et al., 2006; Twohig & Levin, 2017) and tailored emotion-focused, multidimensional approaches for the therapy of shame and guilt (Lammers & Herr-mann, 2020).

FREQUENCY OF THE USE OF DIFFERENT STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT IN ADULTHOOD

The good news is that our findings suggest that harmful or even life-threatening “strategies” such as “Thoughts of suicide; suicide attempts” or “Consuming alcohol” are not used very often by adults for dealing with feelings of guilt (“Consuming alcohol”, for example, as the most frequently used harmful strategy was stated by only 1.55% of all participants; see Table 2). Presumably less harmful and more helpful strategies were used more often:

Starting, for example, with the above stated five considered pro-social strategy categories “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about […]” up to “(Attempts of) reparation/making amends”, strategies of these five categories were used by 5.01 to 18.13% of the participants. Moreover, considering all 987 participants’ statements on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt, 295 (29.89%) statements were assigned to these five pro-social categories (see Table 2). These findings once more support the conclusion that feelings of guilt can have important pro-social adaptive and reparative functions. However, even though strategies of other of our defined categories may be considered pro-social as well, there is also a high proportion of strategies for which no pro-social effect is apparent. Our findings therefore also suggest that experienced feelings of guilt do not always lead to pro-social consequences. As findings of several experimental studies indicate, the pro-social nature of feelings of guilt generally seems to be more complex than originally assumed (e.g., Cryder et al., 2012; de Hooge et al., 2011; de Hooge, 2012). To select one of these studies, de Hooge et al. (2011) conducted a series of social dilemma experiments to measure prosocial behavior in multiple-person scenarios. They found “[…] that guilt motivates prosocial behavior toward a victim at the expense of others around – but not at the expense of oneself” (p. 462).

In addition to focusing on the potential pro-social consequences of feelings of guilt, we may again refer to the coping concept and especially to the above applied higher-order differentiation between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping (see Carver et al., 1989) when making assumptions about the potential importance of different groups of strategies for dealing with feelings in adulthood. Providing definite information on the frequency of the use of these two ways of coping in our sample is not possible, as many strategies used for dealing with feelings of guilt can be considered both problem- and emotion-focused coping. The difficulty of a clear distinction of different suggested coping types is also a main criticism of this and other coping taxonomies (see, e.g., Stanisławski, 2019) and one reason why we did not use such a taxonomy for our classification process. However, when simply adding up only the frequencies of the strategies of the categories that have been discussed in the previous section to be likely or possibly problem- or emotion-focused ways of coping, up to 558 (56.53%) of the 987 stated strategies could serve problem-focused functions, and even up to 728 (73.76%) could serve emotion-focused functions. Thus, strategies referring to both higher-order ways of coping seem to be very important for dealing with feelings of guilt in adulthood. Strategies referring to “less helpful” coping ways of behavioral and mental disengagement and focus on and venting emotions (see Carver et al., 1989), by contrast, seem to be of minor importance given that these strategies of the above discussed corresponding categories were used only by a limited number of participants (0.35-6.22%).

Due to the observed broad variety of different strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt, we are unfortunately unable to elaborate on every single strategy. Two likely more important or at least interesting specific findings, however, need to be addressed.

First, a considerably high number of participants used strategies assigned to the category “Repressing/ignoring/(actively) forgetting/not thinking about/bottling up the feelings of guilt” (used by n = 108/18.65% of all participants; see Table 2). As stated above, such strategies may correspond to the emotion-focused coping category denial (Carver et al., 1989). An alternative characterization of these strategies may be achieved by the term repressive coping. Following the description of Garssen (2007) that repression – referring to “the tendency to inhibit […] the experience and expression of negative emotions or unpleasant cognitions” – is used “to prevent one’s positive self-image from being threatened” (p. 479), it seems reasonable that this type of strategy is also used by many adults to counter feelings of guilt.

Second, 7.60% (n = 44) of all participants with feelings of guilt utilized “Professional support/therapy/ counseling” (see Table 2). This proportion is not huge, but since many adults are confronted with feelings of guilt – the point prevalence for the German adult population, for example, is 10.6%; Luck and Luck-Sikorski (2021a) – and it can, moreover, be assumed that (as usual) more adults may need professional help than actually utilize it (this refers, for example, to those adults who used the above stated harmful “strategies” of “Consuming alcohol” up to “Thoughts of suicide; suicide attempts”), feelings of guilt are an issue relevant for mental health care.

GENDER- AND AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH FEELINGS OF GUILT IN ADULTHOOD

In addition to a slight but statistically significant difference in the average total number of strategies used for dealing with feelings of guilt, the only other observed gender-related difference in our study was that female participants significantly more frequently utilized “Professional support/therapy/counseling” than male participants. The more frequent use of such strategies specifically in female participants may be not completely unexpected, as, in general, more women than men in Germany utilize the help of psychotherapists or psychiatrists (Rommel et al., 2017).

A more important gender-related finding, however, certainly is that male and female participants did not show any other significant difference in the use of strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt. By referring to existing blanket stereotypes about women, one may have expected that female participants, for example, may have used emotion-focused strategies more frequently, as women have a greater emotionality than men. Alternatively, one may have expected that female participants may have used particularly pro-social strategies more frequently, such as “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/broaching the believed moral transgressions/ wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt”, “(Trying) to apologize/to ask/hope for forgiveness” or “(Attempts of) reparation/making amends”, as women are the more social gender.

Both stereotypes have already been proven wrong in the past. Else-Quest et al. (2012), for example, who conducted a meta-analysis on study results regarding potential gender differences in self-conscious emotions such as guilt, shame, pride, and embarrassment, found only small gender differences (d = –.01 to −.27) that were moreover dependent on the ethnicity of the sample, on the assessment of guilt and on factors other than gender in general. Olsson et al. (2021), who assessed gender differences in prosocial self-perceptions, behavioral intentions, and behavior in same- and other-gender interactions in 10 countries with n = 1,915 participants, concluded based on their findings that “there is no ‘more helpful’ gender. Instead, gender differences in prosociality are dynamic and contextual” (p. 1330). Our findings also contradict corresponding blanket gender stereotypes. Moreover, the observed minimal gender differences in strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt in this study perfectly fit our previous gender-related findings on guilt, showing no differences between women and men in the point and lifetime prevalence of feelings of guilt in the German adult population as well as more similarities than differences in reasons for feeling guilty between women and men (Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2021a, b, 2022).

“More similarities than differences” may also apply to our age-related findings on strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt. Regarding the observed differences between the participants of different ages, the lower average total number of strategies used in older participants may be attributed to the also lower average total number of stated reasons for feeling guilty in older adults (see Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2022) – the fewer things one feels guilty about, the fewer different strategies may be required for dealing with these feelings. Moreover, it may be speculated that with increasing age, adults need fewer strategies, as older adults are in general more capable of dealing with feelings of guilt and/or know better which strategies are effective due to greater life experience. Such speculations, however, are also not far from certain blanket stereotypes – at this point not far from an age-related stereotype such as older adults being automatically wiser than younger ones.

The risk of referring to certain age-related stereotypes is also present when attempting to find possible explanations for the observed differences in the use of strategies of some specific categories between younger and older participants: Have the younger adults (18-34 years), for example, more frequently used strategies of the categories “Talking to someone about the feelings of guilt; asking someone for advice (other than the person(s) one is feeling guilty about)” and “Talking to the person(s) one feels guilty about; confession of/broaching the believed moral transgressions/wrongdoings/associated feelings of guilt” than the older ones (35-59/60+ years), as members of the “younger generation” are, on average, more capable of talking about their feelings with relevant others? Conversely, were the older adults required to more frequently seek “Professional support/therapy/counseling” than the younger ones, as members of the “older generations”, are, on average, less capable of talking about their feelings with relevant others in the private sphere? Further studies may be required to investigate the reasons for age-related differences in strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt more deeply to avoid such speculations leading to (re)producing certain stereotypes. Irrespective of the open question of the “true” reasons for observed age-related differences, it can be concluded that neither the age nor the gender of an individual seems to be a strong explanatory factor for the individual’s use of a specific strategy for dealing with feelings of guilt.

LIMITATIONS

Our study is not without limitations. Some of these limitations have already been described in detail elsewhere (see Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2022): for example, we collected information on feelings of guilt using a web-based survey, as we suggested that this rather anonymous approach (when compared to interviews) would make it easier for people to share sensitive personal information. Additionally, we received support in the recruitment of participants from a fieldwork agency with an online panel of registered users. These procedures indeed enabled us to collect information on feelings of guilt from a significant number of adults. However, the findings may not be representative of the German general adult population, as we, for example, (i) did not reach out for adults without access to the internet/online surveys and/or without corresponding digital competences (Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2022) and (ii) included a higher proportion of adults with higher education entrance qualifications in our adult sample than is present in the German general adult population (49.9% vs. 31.9%; Destatis, 2022). Moreover, depressive symptoms were also more common in our sample than in the general population (M/SD PHQ-9 depression scale total score = 6.83/4.91 points vs. 2.7/3.5 (men) and 3.1/3.5 (women); Kocalevent et al., 2013). The latter, however, may not be a surprising result, as our sample only included adults with experienced feelings of guilt, and such feelings are significantly associated with depressive symptoms (Luck & Luck-Sikorski, 2021a, b).

Another limitation specifically refers to the questions on guilt in the survey: we asked for currently and in the past experienced feelings of guilt in a very simple manner by using the above stated questions and did not provide any further information (such as a definition of guilt, for example). This approach allowed us to obtain a rather unrestricted impression of feelings of guilt in German adults (information on reasons for feeling guilty or strategies for dealing with the feelings from their own particular perspective). Without any information on what guilt is and what guilt is not, it is, however, possible that some participants may have confused certain things (e.g., feelings of guilt with feelings of shame), and this, of course, may have also influenced the participants’ answers on strategies for dealing with the feelings. Additionally, in the survey, we did not ask after every stated reason for feeling guilty for the strategies the participants have used/are using for dealing with the feelings related specifically to this stated reason. Instead, we asked more generally about the strategies used – see above; “How are you dealing/how did you deal with your feelings of guilt? (i.e., What are/were your strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt?)”. A link between specific reasons and specific strategies would have provided additional fruitful insights into the motives/requirements/reasons for using certain strategies.

Finally, we inductively classified the strategies for dealing with feelings of guilt in our study. The reasons for this classification approach have already been explained in the analysis section (see above), but it is nonetheless likely that other independent researchers may have classified the strategies differentially (e.g., by defining other/further/fewer categories and/or by assigning strategies to other categories). Due to these limitations, generalizations about the German general adult population should be made with caution.