Pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip. Oh no, right?

Well, sometimes we have to allow guilt – and its ugly sisters shame and regret – to give us a spanking.

Guilt lets us know we have done ourselves and others a moral injury – and it serves to protect us from future wrong-doing.

It’s what psychologists call an ‘adaptive emotion’ – which means that feelings of guilt are designed to help us, and society, thrive.

“It can improve interpersonal relationships and is therefore valuable for social cohesion,” says Dilan Sezer, a PhD student and researcher at the Division of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the University of Basel.

But how much is guilt enough? Sometimes those heavy feelings seem to have settled in for good. Sometimes, what is meant to be a corrective becomes a symptom of a mental disorder.

What then?

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a pill you could take that works like a painkiller? This means you could ditch those feelings of guilt in the same way you deal with a headache.

Even better if the pill wasn’t an actual pharmaceutical.

There’s abundant evidence that, sometimes, just the belief in impending pain relief is enough to make you feel better.

What if you could treat feelings of guilt as if it was a headache? Photo: Getty

In recent years, research into the placebo effect has broadened from investigating physical pain to the emotional kind.

Ms Sezer is the corresponding and lead author of a novel study that investigates whether the placebo effect might work to assuage guilty feelings.

The study

Guilty feelings hang on in our memories. When we remember our bad or unkind behaviour and there’s an uncomfortable twinge, that’s the reality the researchers exploited.

The 112 subjects, aged between 18 and 40, were tested for their inherent tendency to guilt and shame with a tool called the State Shame and Guilt Scale (SSGS).

They were then asked “to write about a time when they had disregarded important rules of conduct, or treated someone close to them unfairly, hurt or even harmed them.”

The participants were then randomised into three groups.

One group were given placebo pills “with being deceptively told that this was a real medication”.

A second group were told they were given a placebo.

Both groups were told that what they had been given will be effective against feelings of guilt.

The control group was given no treatment at all.

The participants’ guilt was measured again using the SSGS.

Results

The results showed that feelings of guilt were significantly reduced in both placebo groups compared with those without medication.

This was also the case when the subjects knew they had been given a placebo.

“Our study therefore supports the intriguing finding that placebos work even when they are administered openly, and that explanation of the treatment is key to its effectiveness,” Ms Sezer said.

Can it help when guilt becomes an illness?

Feelings of guilt might be uncomfortable, but they’re a sign that you’re more or less a good person at heart.

Where these feelings are irrational and persistent they’re described as ‘maladaptive’ and can put your health at risk.

Ms Sezer said further research was needed to see if a placebo was a viable treatment for maladaptive guilt.

“The administering of open-label placebos, in particular, is a promising approach, as it preserves patient autonomy by allowing patients to be fully aware of how the intervention works.”