Like many like-minded people across the globe, I am always stunned by the abject lack of guilt that gets displayed by Donald Trump and much of his following, whether in the Administration, Congress, the Judiciary or the general public. Let’s start by asking ourselves what exactly guilt is. Guilt is a powerful moral emotion that serves as an internal compass for our behavior and relationships. Guilt is the uncomfortable feeling we experience when we believe we’ve violated our own moral standards, hurt someone, or failed to meet an obligation. It’s that voice saying “I did something wrong” or “I let someone down.” It is the equivalent of “social glue” in that It motivates us to repair relationships, apologize, and make amends. It helps maintain social bonds and cooperation. It is a moral guide for us on a day-to-day basis. It reinforces our values and discourages us from repeating harmful behaviors. And, it acts as a self-correcting mechanism. Unlike shame (which says “I am bad”), guilt focuses on the action (“I did something bad”), making it easier to change behavior.
Nevertheless, there is still both healthy and unhealthy guilt. Healthy guilt is proportionate to actual wrongdoing and motivates constructive action – apologizing, making amends, changing behavior. Unhealthy guilt is excessive, disproportionate, or persists even after appropriate amends. This includes feeling guilty for things outside your control, for taking care of yourself, or ruminating endlessly without taking action. The psychology behind guilt emerges in childhood as we internalize social rules and develop empathy. It requires the ability to understand how our actions affect others and to hold ourselves accountable. Eventually it becomes the case that for there to be guilt (the healthy kind), there must be empathy.
And there’s the rub. Not everyone has developed what qualifies as empathy. To be more to the point, not everyone has empathy, or at least not to the same degree. It exists on a spectrum, and there are several important distinctions to understand. Most people have some capacity for empathy, but it varies widely in strength and type. Some people are highly empathetic (sometimes to the point of being overwhelmed by others’ emotions), while others have very limited empathetic responses. There is cognitive empathy, which is understanding intellectually what someone else is feeling. There is emotional/affective empathy, which is actually feeling what others feel. And then there is compassionate empathy, which is being moved to help someone based on understanding their feelings. People can have one type of empathy without the others. For example, some individuals can understand emotions intellectually but not feel them viscerally. Certain conditions are associated with reduced empathy like psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder (the lack of emotional empathy), narcissistic personality disorder (reduced empathy for others), autism spectrum disorder (difficulty expressing or processing empathy), and alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing emotions).
Can empathy be developed? For most people, empathy can be strengthened through practice, perspective-taking exercises, and intentional effort, though there appear to be limits for those with certain neurological or personality conditions. So while empathy is a common human trait, it’s not universal or uniform across all people, and some simply do not have it in any meaningful amount. That means that the absence of empathy can very easily lead to the absence of guilt. Indeed, some people experience little to no guilt and the clinical conditions associated with lack of guilt is called Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy. People with these conditions feel minimal remorse for harming others, they lack empathy and emotional connection to others’ suffering, they may (and usually do) understand intellectually that something is “wrong” but they don’t feel the emotional weight of it and therefore often become skilled at mimicking appropriate emotional responses without actually feeling them.
Make no mistake, psychopathy, or being a psychopath, is characterized by a more profound emotional deficit – these individuals genuinely don’t seem to experience guilt the way most people do. It appears to have neurological components affecting how the brain processes emotions and consequences. Some people are raised in environments where certain harmful behaviors aren’t taught as wrong, so they may not feel guilt about those specific actions. Extreme trauma or abuse can sometimes impair the development of normal guilt responses. Certain personality traits (high narcissism, low agreeableness) can reduce guilt sensitivity without rising to a clinical disorder. Most people fall somewhere in the middle – experiencing appropriate guilt most of the time but perhaps less in certain domains or situations. True absence of guilt across the board is relatively rare and usually indicates significant psychological differences. The causes of reduced or absent guilt are complex and multifaceted. There are neurological/biological factors, brain structure differences (reduced activity in areas like the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, where emotion processing and moral reasoning and impulse control are supposed to occur), genetics, brain chemistry differences, developmental/environmental factors like childhood trauma, the absence of moral teaching and being raised by parents devoid of empathy. Typically it’s a combination of biological predisposition plus environmental factors. We have all heard and read about Donald Trump’s upbringing and know that this might well have been written specifically to characterize that upbringing.
This manifests itself most visibly as what is called the “never apologize, never explain” philosophy that has been variously linked to British politician Benjamin Disraeli, American film icon John Wayne and then throughout American corporate culture brought into the fore by another famous cowboy and politician…Ronald Reagan. It was in the Reagan era when “Greed is good” valorized ruthlessness and showing vulnerability was considered weakness in negotiations. Nowhere was this more prevalent than in the arena of real estate and development specifically. New York City real estate in the 1970s-80s was especially cutthroat. This zero-sum thinking, where every concession was seen as losing, is the crucible that bred Donald Trump.
Many people have noted certain patterns in Trump’s public behavior that include rarely apologizing or expressing remorse publicly, a tendency to deflect blame onto others, confidence that appears unshaken by criticism and patterns some interpret as lack of empathy in certain situations. Those who see pathology in Trump’s actions point to these patterns as potential signs of narcissistic personality disorder or reduced guilt capacity. Obviously, without a proper clinical evaluation, we simply can’t know. Public behavior – especially in the high-stakes world of politics – doesn’t give us reliable access to someone’s internal emotional experience. People can appear remorseless for strategic reasons, or conversely, feel genuine guilt while maintaining a tough public image.
As we see the Epstein files emerge more fully, the world wants Epstein consorts to bear their guilt and at very least, show remorse and regret. Guilt and regret are closely related but distinct emotions with important differences. Both involve looking backward at our actions and can be uncomfortable and motivate behavior change. Self-evaluation is generally forthcoming and can lead to making amends. Guilt often produces regret, and regret can trigger guilt and both must be present to achieve a true moral reckoning, especially for such a public and universally deplored act like pedophilia and sex-trafficking. But regret can be wistful, sad, and more about “what might have been”, where guilt tends to be heavier, more urgent, and directed at repairing harm. Regret without guilt is very common. So one might say that regret is cheap and guilt is dear. Guilt demands action (apologize, make amends), and when that demand is not served…it finds another path.
We are always asking ourselves these days whether the Trump day will have its comeuppance. It is my belief that just as the Frankenstein monster, lacking a moral compass, eventually destroyed Viktor Frankenstein, its creator with a very confused morality, Trump’s lack of guilt around something so publicly abhorrent as the Epstein connection, will finally turn his creation (the MAGA Monster) on his own inability to grasp the imperative of empathy and guilt.