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AdeleneDawner comments on Guilt: Another Gift Nobody Wants - Less Wrong
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My question is:
Why is guilt often so bad a de-motivator? There are people who know they will feel guilty before the fact, do in fact feel guilt after the fact, and perhaps even continue to live with that guilt every day, but still continue the behavior. Guilt seems like it evolved exactly for the purpose of preventing people from acting in a way they consider immoral or unethical, so why does it so often seem so bad at its job?
I think the point is that it didn't evolve to stop us from doing things we consider immoral - it evolved to stop us from getting punished by other people for doing things that are generally considered immoral.
This also explains why people feel relieved (and, as is implied, less guilty) when the thing they're feeling guilty about is found out - it seems quite likely to me that in the ancestral environment, if you were going to be punished for something, that punishment would happen pretty promptly after your indiscretion was discovered, and guilt would be pretty pointless after that point in time.
"I think the point is that it didn't evolve to stop us from doing things we consider immoral - it evolved to stop us from getting punished by other people for doing things that are generally considered immoral."
This seems a question begging explanation. It simply pushes the issues back, "why did it evolve just to signal a self-punitive tendency and not to signal a more-adaptive restitutionary tendency?" (Perhaps it only looks more adaptative, but that must be shown.)