It seems to me like guilt and shame function surprisingly poorly as motivators for good work in the modern world. Not only do they often not result in people getting things done at the time, they can create a positive feedback loop that makes people depressed and unproductive for months.
But then why have we evolved to feel them so strongly?
One possibility is that guilt and shame do work well, but their function is to stop us from doing bad things. In a world where there’s only a few things you can do, it’s clear how to do them all, and the priority is to stay away from a few especially bad options, that’s helpful.
But to do good skilled work, it’s not enough to know what you shouldn’t do — e.g. procrastinate. The main problem is figuring out what out of the million things you might do is the right one, and staying focussed on it. And for that curiosity or excitement or pride are much more effective. You need to be pulled in the right direction, not merely pushed away from doing nothing, or severely violating a social norm.
Another second variation on the same theme would be that modern work is different from the tasks our hunter gatherer ancestors did in all sorts of ways that can make it less motivating. In the past just feeling guilt about e.g. being lazy, was enough to get us to go gather some berries, but now for most of us, it isn’t. So guilt fails, and then we feel even more guilty, and then we’re even less energetic, so it fails again, etc.
A third possibility is that shame and guilt are primarily about motivating you to fit into a group and go along with its peculiar norms. But in a modern workplace that’s not the main thing most of us are lacking. Rather we need to be inspired by something we’re working on and give it enough focussed attention long enough to produce an interesting product.
Any other theories? Or maybe you think guilt and shame do work well?
Rob Wiblin, August 2019:
Cf. Brienne Yudkowsky on shame and the discussion on https://www.facebook.com/robbensinger/posts/10160749026995447.