“Guilt is not an intrinsically helpful emotion for future decision-making. And often the spiral of guilt and shame can lead criminals to remain criminals.
This idea was so intriguing to me, for personal reasons that should arlready be clear, that I later took it on for my undergraduate senior thesis. My paper, which I turned in six weeks early and for which I received an A, was titled "Remorse and Absolution: Peas in a Pod or Dangerous Bunkmates?”