Guilt in the Digital Communication Environment: A Theoretical Model of Moral-Relational Regulatory Functioning

Abstract

Psychological research has long conceptualized guilt as a moral-relational regulatory emotion, yet its functioning in digital communication environments has received little systematic theoretical attention. This article proposes a theoretical model to understand the conditions created by the digital medium for the emergence, intensity, and moral-relational regulatory functioning of guilt. Conceptualizing guilt as a communicatively embedded regulatory process, the model integrates four theoretical approaches: the theory of mediatization, the psychology of moral and self-conscious emotions, narrative identity theory, and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation. The model describes guilt as a process comprising five interrelated moments. Its central thesis is that four structural characteristics of the digital medium—partial anonymity and increased social distance, temporal asynchronicity, mass publicity, and the unpredictability of the normative framework—influence all moments of the process in a similar direction, thereby weakening or destabilizing the moral-relational regulatory role of guilt. Using intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations as examples, the model also shows that these effects may operate differently depending on the type of orientation. The proposed framework may contribute to the dialogue among psychology, media studies, and the study of religion by interpreting the functioning of guilt under the specific conditions of the digital communication environment.

1. Introduction

Over recent decades, research on moral emotions has increasingly moved away from the view that guilt is merely an internal, intrapsychic state. Instead, a perspective has gained prominence that understands guilt fundamentally as a social and communicative phenomenon (Baumeister et al. 1994; Tangney et al. 2007). Within this approach, guilt is not simply an unpleasant internal experience but an element of a relational signaling system. It enables the person who perceives a norm violation to restore the damaged social bond, signal commitment to shared norms, and feel motivated to repair. Guilt therefore performs a moral-relational regulatory role. In this sense, guilt’s regulatory function is not limited to internal self-evaluation or relational signaling; it also motivates corrective or reparative action. Its functioning presupposes three conditions: the perception of a norm violation, the attribution of responsibility to oneself, and a communicative environment in which reparation and the restoration of the relationship are possible.

This relational embeddedness, however, rests on an assumption that is rarely made explicit. Established models of guilt tend to presuppose that the participants in a moral situation interact in one another’s presence, along relatively shared and stable norms, and with immediate feedback. Classical accounts typically interpret the emergence, experience, and consequences of guilt under the tacit conditions of face-to-face, dyadic, or small-group interaction. Over the past two decades, however, an increasing proportion of human interaction has shifted into digital communication environments, which precisely transform these basic conditions. Participants are often not present at the same time; feedback becomes delayed; and the addressee of a communication is often not a single, known partner but an audience of indeterminate size and unpredictable composition. The norms against which behavior could be evaluated are multiple and, at times, mutually contradictory. Recent reviews on social media and morality further indicate that digital platforms not only transmit moral communication but also shape moral judgments, moral emotions, social evaluation, and self-views in distinct ways (Neumann and Rhodes 2024; Van Bavel et al. 2024).

Media studies describe this broad process through the concept of mediatization: the process by which the operating principles and systems of media increasingly permeate the fabric of social life, institutions, and everyday interaction. The digital mediation of communication is no longer a technical condition external to social reality, but one of its constitutive elements (Couldry and Hepp 2017; Hepp 2020). If guilt is indeed a communicatively embedded regulatory process, then this profound transformation of the conditions of communication necessarily alters the emotion’s functioning as well. To date, however, little attention has been paid to the precise conditions created by the digital medium for the emergence, experience, and regulatory role of guilt. Guilt—and moral emotions more broadly—has rarely been approached from the perspective of the structural characteristics of the digital medium.

This article seeks to address this gap by outlining a comprehensive theoretical model that examines the moral-relational functioning of guilt specifically under the conditions of the digital medium. The model draws on four theoretical approaches. These are discussed in detail in the following section; at this point, it is sufficient to note that each illuminates a different aspect of the phenomenon. The theory of mediatization addresses the medium of communication; the theory of moral and self-conscious emotions addresses the psychological process of guilt; narrative identity theory addresses the long-term outcome of regulation; and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation provides a specific field of application. These four approaches are not mutually exclusive but offer complementary perspectives.

The central thesis of the article is that the digital medium does not merely modify the functioning of guilt but creates interactional conditions in which its emergence may become uncertain, and its regulatory role may be weakened. It is argued here that four interrelated structural characteristics of the digital medium—partial anonymity and increased social distance, temporal asynchronicity, mass publicity, and the unpredictability of the normative framework—operate in the same direction. Together, they weaken the regulatory process through which guilt fulfills its moral-relational regulatory role. This does not mean that guilt never emerges in the digital medium; rather, its functioning becomes more unpredictable and, under certain conditions, may move in the opposite direction from that predicted by classical models.

The article contributes to the literature in three ways. Theoretically, it proposes a comprehensive framework that integrates findings from mediatization research, moral psychology, and the study of narrative identity into a unified communication-based model, rather than treating the digital medium merely as an external background factor. Conceptually, it develops a five-moment process model of guilt and, from its central thesis, derives empirically testable hypotheses for each moment of the process. In terms of application, it uses the example of a digital religious environment to show how the model can be applied to analyzing a context characterized by a strong normative system. In doing so, the article aims to contribute to the dialogue among psychology, media studies, and the study of religion, particularly regarding research that increasingly examines religious and moral experience in networked publics.

2. Theoretical Background: The Four Pillars

The proposed model integrates four theoretical approaches. These are not understood as competing explanations or as standing in a hierarchical relation to one another, but rather as complementary perspectives: each illuminates a different aspect of guilt’s functioning in the digital medium. In what follows, the four theoretical pillars are presented separately, followed by their integration into a unified model.

2.1. Mediatization: The Theory of the Medium of Communication

The concept of mediatization emerged from the recognition in media studies that the role of media should not be understood as a simple effect, but as a profound transformation of social reality. According to Couldry and Hepp (2017), mediatization is a long-term historical process through which social life becomes increasingly intertwined with the systems and operating principles of digital media. This entanglement has now become so extensive that the construction of social reality has become inseparable from the presence of media. Hepp (2020) uses the concept of “deep mediatization” to refer to the extent to which digital technology no longer merely mediates human relationships but becomes embedded in even the most minute elements of those relationships. In doing so, it fundamentally reshapes the conditions of communication, self-representation, and relational life.

The perspective of mediatization is indispensable for the communicative analysis of guilt because it prevents the digital medium from being treated as a neutral channel that transmits moral situations unchanged. On the contrary, its specific characteristics—the persistence and searchability of utterances, the opacity of the audience, and the temporal asynchronicity of interactions—actively shape what counts as a norm violation, who perceives it, and what response options become available. From the perspective of moral emotions, this means that the emergence and regulatory functioning of guilt are not independent of the structure of the communicative environment. This argument also resonates with McLuhan’s classical insight that media should not be understood as neutral vehicles of content. From this perspective, the medium does not merely carry a message but restructures the conditions under which the message is perceived, interpreted, and socially acted upon (McLuhan [1964] 1994). McLuhan’s later “laws of media” may also be read as a heuristic for asking what a medium enhances, obsolesces, retrieves, and reverses when pushed to its limits (McLuhan 1977). Applied to guilt, this means that the digital form of communication may alter not only the transmission of moral expression but also the relational and normative conditions under which guilt can perform its regulatory function.

The theory of networked publics provides a conceptual framework for describing these characteristics of digital communication. Networked publics can be understood as publics that are simultaneously constituted by networked technologies and by the social, cultural, and communicative practices that emerge through them. According to Boyd (2011), digital content—because it exists in the form of data—has four properties that distinguish it from face-to-face communication. It is persistent because an utterance is automatically recorded and archived; replicable, because it can be reproduced without practical limitation; searchable, because it can be retrieved retrospectively; and scalable, because its visibility can increase substantially. These properties have two consequences that are decisive for the moral situation. The first is audience opacity: the speaker cannot know who will have access to the content, or when. The second is context collapse, in which previously separated social contexts converge within a single communicative situation (Marwick and Boyd 2011). As will be shown below, it is precisely these phenomena that fundamentally shape the communicative conditions under which guilt functions.

2.2. Moral and Self-Conscious Emotions: The Psychological Process of Guilt

In psychology, guilt belongs to the family of self-conscious emotions, together with shame, embarrassment, and pride. These emotions differ from basic emotions, such as anger or fear, in that their emergence presupposes self-directed reflection. The individual must be able to relate the event to the self, evaluate it against an internal standard or goal, and attribute its cause to the self (Tracy and Robins 2004). Within this framework, guilt emerges when the individual perceives a violation of their own norms, feels responsible for it, and judges their action to be inconsistent with their values.

The moral-relational role of guilt is most clearly illuminated by the interpersonal approach. According to Baumeister et al. (1994), guilt is primarily a relational emotion: a social mechanism that maintains important human relationships by motivating the transgressor to repair the harm and adhere to norms in the future. In this sense, guilt is not merely an internal experience but also a social signal. It communicates to the injured party and to the broader community that the individual accepts the validity of the violated norm, assumes responsibility, and is prepared to restore the relationship. The review by Tangney et al. (2007) confirms that guilt—in contrast to shame—is typically associated with empathy, responsibility-taking, and reparative tendencies; that is, it facilitates prosocial behavior.

At the same time, understanding the regulatory functioning of guilt requires a clear distinction between guilt and shame. Although everyday language often uses the two emotions interchangeably, psychological literature consistently differentiates between them. The best-known theoretical distinction was formulated by Lewis (1971) and elaborated in detail by Tangney and Dearing (2002). According to this distinction, guilt is directed toward a specific action (“I did something wrong”), whereas shame concerns the self as a whole (“I am bad”). This difference is also reflected in behavioral consequences: guilt motivates responsibility-taking and reparation, whereas shame more often leads to hiding, withdrawal, and defensive reactions.

This distinction, however, remains descriptive in itself. The theoretical explanation of the difference between the two emotions is provided by the appraisal approach. According to the model proposed by Tracy and Robins (2004), guilt and shame are distinguished not only by whether the evaluation is directed toward the act or toward the self as a whole, but also by how the individual interprets the cause of the failure. Three dimensions of this interpretation are decisive. The first is whether the cause is internal (“I caused it”) or external (“the circumstances caused it”). The second is whether it is stable (“a permanent characteristic of me”) or unstable (“it happened on this occasion”). The third is whether it is controllable (“I can do something about it; next time I can act differently”) or uncontrollable (“it is beyond my control”). According to Tracy and Robins (2006), guilt typically emerges when the individual attributes the error to an internal but unstable and controllable cause; that is, when the individual interprets the situation as one in which they made a mistake, but the action did not stem from a permanent personal characteristic, and they can act differently in the future. Shame, by contrast, emerges when the failure is attributed to an internal, stable, and uncontrollable cause; that is, when the individual judges the error to originate in an unchangeable personal characteristic. This explains why guilt allows for reparation and change, whereas shame does not: if the cause of the failure appears stable and uncontrollable, the individual is less likely to perceive a meaningful possibility of changing their behavior.

The same appraisal process also explains the conditions under which shame, rather than guilt, becomes the dominant emotion. This is likely to occur when the negative evaluation extends from the specific action to the self as a whole; when the cause is judged to be stable and uncontrollable, making the consequences appear final and irreparable; and when reparation is not possible. As the central argument of this article suggests, the digital medium makes the emergence of these conditions more likely in several ways. The persistent presence of content may create the impression that the consequences are final, while audience opacity may make it more difficult to identify whom reparation should be directed toward. The distinction between shame and guilt is therefore not merely a theoretical issue but a fundamental analytical dimension for understanding the effects of the digital medium.

2.3. Narrative Identity: The Outcome of Regulation

Whereas the theory of moral emotions explains the emergence and immediate psychological functioning of guilt, the long-term regulatory effect of a norm violation depends on how the experience is narratively integrated. Narrative identity theory provides the conceptual framework for interpreting this process. According to McAdams (2001) and McAdams and McLean (2013), the core of identity consists of an internalized, continuously developing life story that organizes the remembered past and the imagined future into a unified narrative that provides purpose and meaning. The individual does not merely undergo events; they continuously interpret and reinterpret them within the context of their own life story.

One of the most significant empirical contributions of this approach is the distinction between redemptive and contamination sequences (McAdams et al. 2001). In a redemptive sequence, an emotionally negative episode leads to a positive outcome or to a positive meaning concerning the self. In a contamination sequence, by contrast, an initially positive event acquires a negative interpretation or ends in a negative turn. Research indicates that redemptive sequences are associated with higher psychological well-being, lower levels of depression, and greater generativity, whereas contamination sequences are associated with the opposite patterns (McAdams et al. 2001).

This distinction establishes a direct link between the moral emotion and its long-term regulatory outcome. From a narrative perspective, the adaptive processing of guilt can be described as the narrative integration of the norm violation as a redemptive sequence: the recognition of the error, the assumption of responsibility, and reparation are organized into an episode that ultimately becomes a story of moral development or relational strengthening. Maladaptive processing, by contrast, is organized as a contamination sequence: the norm violation becomes an unresolved and repeatedly recalled episode that reinforces negative self-evaluation extending to the self as a whole, is accompanied by persistent self-blame, and is followed by the consolidation of shame. Narrative identity theory thus allows for the interpretation of the difference between adaptive and maladaptive guilt without relying on clinical categories. The question is not whether the emotion is present or absent, but what kind of narrative sequence it becomes integrated into.

This theoretical pillar is particularly important in the digital medium. In the spaces of networked publics, episodes of norm violation often do not remain merely part of the individual’s internal narrative but persist in a recorded, searchable, and publicly accessible form. The persistence of the digital trace may hinder the narrative integration of the norm violation: the episode is not incorporated into the life story as a closed past experience, but remains continuously present and can be recalled at any time. Instead of facilitating redemptive closure, this may promote the consolidation of a contamination sequence.

2.4. Application of the Model: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Religious Orientation

The fourth pillar is not connected to the model’s general structure, but to its application. The relationship between religiosity and guilt has been at the center of research for decades, yet findings have been inconsistent. Some studies have associated religiosity with heightened guilt and distress, whereas others have linked it to more favorable adjustment (Hackney and Sanders 2003; Maltby 2005). One important lesson of contemporary research is that this inconsistency largely stems from the fact that religiosity is not a unitary phenomenon. According to the classic distinction proposed by Allport and Ross (1967), in intrinsic religious orientation, religion is an internalized value that permeates the individual’s way of life and value system. In extrinsic religious orientation, by contrast, the relation to religion is primarily instrumental: religion functions as a source of social acceptance, security, or status.

This distinction is particularly significant for the proposed model because the two religious orientations differ in their relation to the source of norms and the experience of responsibility. In the case of intrinsic orientation, norms become internalized; therefore, guilt evaluates the act in relation to the internalized value system, and reparation serves to restore personal integrity. In the case of extrinsic orientation, by contrast, norm adherence is more closely tied to compliance and social evaluation. This may increase sensitivity to audience reactions, so that the regulatory function of guilt may serve less to restore the relationship and more to fulfill external expectations.

This difference becomes especially relevant for research in the digital medium. If one of the main effects of the digital medium—as proposed by the article’s central thesis—is the destabilization of normative frameworks and the opacity of the audience, then the two orientations may be affected differently. In individuals with intrinsic orientation, because of the internalized normative system, the regulatory functioning of guilt is expected to depend less on the audience’s immediate reactions and may therefore be more resistant to the destabilizing effects of the digital medium. In individuals with extrinsic orientation, by contrast, the primacy of fulfilling external expectations presumably intensifies normative uncertainty and dependence on social evaluation. Religiosity thus provides not only a field of application for the model, but also an opportunity to formulate empirically testable hypotheses concerning the differential effects of the digital medium.

3. The Five Moments of Guilt in the Digital Communication Environment

The theoretical synthesis presented in Section 2 is elaborated below as a process model. The model understands guilt as a communicatively embedded regulatory process consisting of five interrelated moments: (1) the perception of a norm violation, (2) the attribution of responsibility to oneself, (3) the emotional processing of responsibility, (4) the expression of guilt, and (5) the consequences of guilt. These moments are not strictly sequential, linear steps, but mutually interacting subprocesses that together sustain the regulatory functioning of guilt. The central claim of the model is that the digital medium transforms the operating conditions of each element of this process, potentially weakening its regulatory functioning. In what follows, the five moments are discussed in turn, with particular attention to the points at which the digital medium modifies their functioning. A more detailed analysis of these effects, organized according to the four structural characteristics of the digital medium, is provided in Section 4.

3.1. The Perception of a Norm Violation

The starting point of the process of guilt is the perception that an action—whether committed, intended, or omitted—violates a moral or relational norm. This presupposes that the individual has access to a relatively clear normative frame of reference against which the action can be evaluated. In face-to-face situations, this frame is usually provided by the norms of the specific situation, the relationship, and the community: participants generally know what counts as appropriate and what does not.

In the digital medium, the normative framework may become unpredictable, often fragmented and heterogeneous. In networked publics, an utterance may reach several audience groups at once, each governed by different norms; context collapse describes precisely this phenomenon (Marwick and Boyd 2011). As a result, the individual often cannot clearly determine whether a norm violation has occurred, since what is acceptable to one audience may be offensive to another. The perception of norm violation, therefore, becomes uncertain because of the unpredictability of the normative framework. This is not because the individual becomes less sensitive to moral norms, but because the normative frame of reference itself becomes unpredictable, fragmented, and partly contradictory. This may result in two types of distortion. On the one hand, an actual norm violation may remain unnoticed because a clear basis for evaluation is lacking. On the other hand, normative uncertainty may intensify self-monitoring, in which the individual continuously considers whether they have violated a norm without being able to clearly determine which norm it might be.

3.2. The Attribution of Responsibility to Oneself

The second moment is the attribution of responsibility to oneself, that is, whether the individual regards themselves as responsible for the norm violation. According to the theory of self-conscious emotions, the emergence of guilt requires that the individual attribute the cause of the norm violation to the self rather than to external circumstances (Tracy and Robins 2004). Responsibility attributed to oneself, however, may be either realistic or excessive, and this is one of the decisive factors determining whether guilt takes an adaptive or maladaptive form.

In the digital medium, the experience of personal responsibility may be influenced by several factors that operate in opposite directions. Because digital communication is often multi-actor in nature—where the consequences of an utterance are shaped by the involvement of numerous mediators, sharers, commenters, and algorithms—the causal chain becomes fragmented, making it more difficult for the individual to clearly assess the extent of their own responsibility. Increased social distance and partial anonymity may further weaken the experience of personal responsibility because the perceived direct link between the norm violation and the injured party is attenuated. At the same time—and this is one of the distinctive contradictions of the digital medium—context collapse and audience opacity may lead to responsibility being overgeneralized: the individual may feel the need to account for their utterance before an immeasurably large and heterogeneous audience. This overgeneralization may increase the likelihood that shame becomes the dominant emotion.

3.3. The Emotional Processing of Guilt and Its Distinction from Shame

At this stage, it is determined whether the experience of norm violation remains organized as guilt or whether shame becomes the dominant emotion. As shown in Section 2.2, the distinction between guilt and shame is not based merely on the intensity of the emotions, but on the different attributional patterns described in the appraisal approach. This difference determines whether the experience leads toward reparation and change, or toward negative evaluation extending to the self as a whole and toward hiding. The question here is how the digital medium influences emotional processing.

The model argues that the digital medium increases the likelihood that shame will, at several points, become the dominant emotion. The norm violation becomes recorded, searchable, and preserved as a persistent digital trace, which may strengthen the experience that its consequences are final and irreparable. According to the appraisal model of Tracy and Robins (2004, 2006), this facilitates the individual’s judgment that the cause of the failure is stable and uncontrollable, a condition for the emergence of shame. Being evaluated before a mass public sphere may further intensify negative evaluation, extending to the self as a whole. In addition, because of temporal asynchronicity, the immediate personal feedback that would direct guilt toward the specific action and enable reparation and the restoration of the relationship—such as the injured party’s reaction or forgiveness—may be absent. Emotional processing in the digital medium may therefore be more likely to make shame the dominant emotion. This interpretation is consistent with recent research on online shaming, which suggests that digital environments may make public moral evaluation more salient and intensify the connection between moral judgment, exposure, and shame (Muir et al. 2023).

3.4. The Expression of Guilt

The relationship-regulating role of guilt largely depends on how the acknowledgment of the norm violation and the intention to make reparation are expressed. It is primarily through this expression that the injured party and the community perceive that the individual identifies with the violated norm and is prepared to restore the relationship. In face-to-face situations, this expression is usually personal and directed toward the injured party.

In the digital medium, the conditions of expression are fundamentally transformed. Because an utterance takes place before an opaque and often large audience, the expression of guilt may easily become detached from the injured party and turn into a performative expression of guilt, in which the expression is addressed not only to the injured party but also to the public. In such cases, public apology or self-reproach does not necessarily serve the restoration of the relationship, but rather the shaping of social evaluation, that is, the maintenance of face-work before the audience (Goffman 1959). This shift entails a double risk. On the one hand, expression may become detached from actual reparation and become merely a symbolic gesture. On the other hand, the expression itself may become a further source of norm violation if different audiences evaluate its sincerity or appropriateness differently. In the digital medium, the expression of guilt may thus lose its function of restoring the relationship. This detachment from the injured party also points to a broader loss of mutual intersubjectivity. When guilt is expressed before an indeterminate public rather than within a clearly defined interpersonal relation, the emotion may lack a stable relational object toward which acknowledgment, reparation, or reconciliation could be directed. Under such conditions, guilt may intensify psychologically yet remain relationally ineffective: the individual may feel exposed and responsible, but without a concrete other with whom the regulatory process can be completed.

3.5. The Consequences of Guilt

The fifth moment is the outcome of the process. This includes the restoration of the relationship, the development of social evaluation, and—at the level of narrative identity—the narrative integration of the experience of norm violation. In adaptive cases, the process comes to closure: reparation takes place, the relationship is restored, and the episode is integrated into the life story as a redemptive sequence (McAdams et al. 2001). In maladaptive cases, the process remains unresolved: guilt becomes consolidated as self-blame or shame, casting a shadow over the narrative of the self as a contamination sequence.

The digital medium places precisely this closure at greatest risk. Because of audience opacity, the recipient of reparation is often not clearly identifiable, leaving restoration without a definite target. The persistent digital trace of the utterance hinders the episode’s narrative closure: the norm violation is preserved in a form that is searchable, retrievable, and open to reinterpretation at any time, favoring contamination over redemptive closure. Social evaluation may become unpredictable in a public sphere characterized by temporal dispersion and large audiences, since reactions may be delayed, fluctuate over time, and fail to come to closure at a single point. This moment is therefore especially vulnerable to interruption of the regulatory process and to the failure of the closure through which guilt would contribute to the restoration of the relationship and the self-image.

3.6. The Five Moments of Guilt as an Interrelated Process

Taken together, the five moments presented above constitute the regulatory process of guilt. In adaptive functioning, the perception of a norm violation leads to the realistic attribution of responsibility to oneself, the adaptive emotional processing of guilt, the expression directed toward the injured party, and, finally, the restoration of the relationship and the narrative closure of the norm violation. The process thereby reaches closure, and guilt fulfills its regulatory role.

The central claim of the model is that the digital medium modifies the functioning of all five moments in the same direction: it renders the perception of norm violation uncertain, may distort the attribution of responsibility to oneself, increases the likelihood that shame becomes the dominant emotion, shifts the expression of guilt toward a performative direction, and hinders the closure of the process. These effects do not occur independently of one another, but derive from the same four structural characteristics—partial anonymity, temporal asynchronicity, mass publicity, and the unpredictability of the normative framework—which are analyzed in detail in the following section.

4. The Four Structural Characteristics of the Digital Medium and Their Psychological Consequences

Section 3 traced the regulatory process of guilt step by step. This section approaches the issue from the opposite direction: it examines the four structural characteristics of the digital medium and, in each case, analyzes the psychological consequences through which they affect the functioning of guilt. The four characteristics—partial anonymity and increased social distance, temporal asynchronicity, mass publicity, and the unpredictability of the normative framework—are not independent of one another. What they have in common is that each operates in the same direction: each weakens or destabilizes the feedback on which the regulatory role of guilt is based.

4.1. Partial Anonymity and Increased Social Distance

One of the most characteristic features of the digital medium is that participants in communication are often only partially identifiable, while the absence of physical presence increases social distance. The other party’s face, voice, and bodily reactions cannot be directly perceived, while the speaker may not be fully identifiable either. In Suler’s (2004) theory of the online disinhibition effect, two distinct factors are distinguished. Dissociative anonymity (“you do not know me”) enables individuals to separate their online actions from their offline selves, thereby reducing feelings of vulnerability and personal responsibility. Invisibility (“you cannot see me”), in turn, removes the other party’s immediate nonverbal feedback, thereby reducing the fear of social evaluation.

Within the process of guilt, these two factors primarily affect the attribution of responsibility to oneself and the emotional processing of guilt. The experience of personal responsibility may be weakened because social distance reduces the perceived direct connection between the norm violation and the injured party: the impact on the other person is not readily perceptible and is therefore less likely to evoke the experience of personal responsibility and the motivation to repair. The emergence of guilt may consequently become less certain: it may be less intense or fail to emerge at all because the immediate emotional feedback that usually makes the seriousness of the norm violation perceptible is absent. According to Suler (2004), however, disinhibition is bidirectional: it does not simply mean harsher behavior, but a general loosening of inhibitions, which may facilitate both sincere self-disclosure and impulsive, harmful utterances. This is consistent with the central thesis of the article: the digital medium does not simply reduce guilt but makes its emergence uncertain—the norm violation may occur without the individual clearly attributing responsibility to themselves and experiencing guilt.

4.2. Temporal Asynchronicity

In face-to-face interaction, the response to a norm violation is typically immediate: the other party’s facial expression, tone of voice, and behavior signal the injury without delay, and this feedback initiates the regulatory process of guilt. In digital communication, by contrast, temporal asynchronicity is common: hours or even days may pass between the message and the response, and the response often does not arrive at a single, clearly identifiable moment, but rather in a delayed manner from multiple sources. Suler (2004) describes this temporal asynchronicity as “see you later”: the absence of immediate feedback changes the emotional dynamics of the interaction.

This affects the moral-relational regulatory functioning of guilt in two ways. First, it affects the emotional processing of guilt: in the absence of immediate feedback, the connection between the norm violation and its emotional consequences may become less clear. Second—and more seriously—it affects the closure of the process. Reparation and the restoration of the relationship are usually reciprocal, temporally coordinated processes: the response to an apology closes the episode. If, however, feedback is temporally dispersed and does not converge into a single closing moment, the process remains open. The norm violation cannot reach a satisfactory closure, which, as shown in Section 2.3, favors the consolidation of a contamination sequence.

4.3. Mass Publicity

The third characteristic concerns the size and composition of the audience. In face-to-face interaction, a norm violation has a definite and known recipient and witnesses. In the digital medium, by contrast, the potential audience of an utterance is orders of magnitude larger, while its composition remains largely opaque to the speaker. In Boyd’s (2011) terminology, this is a consequence of scalability: the visibility of content may, in principle, increase without practical limitation, and the speaker does not know who, or how many people, actually have access to it.

Mass publicity transforms several moments of the guilt process. It may facilitate the emergence of a performative expression of guilt: because expression takes place before a large and opaque audience, it can easily become detached from the injured party. The expression of guilt may therefore serve not the restoration of the relationship, but face-work (Goffman 1959). It also hinders the closure of the process by making social evaluation unpredictable: the response of a large and heterogeneous audience is neither unified nor consistent, and the speaker therefore receives no clear feedback on whether reparation has been successful. In addition, public evaluation—especially negative evaluation—may intensify negative evaluation extending to the self as a whole, thereby increasing the likelihood that shame becomes the dominant emotion.

4.4. The Unpredictability of the Normative Framework

The fourth characteristic is the unpredictability of the normative framework: a situation in which the speaker lacks access to a single, unambiguous normative frame of reference against which behavior can be evaluated. This arises from two interrelated factors. The first is the plurality of norms: in the digital medium, an utterance may reach several audience groups with different value systems simultaneously, and their expectations are not necessarily compatible. The second is context collapse: formerly separate social contexts—the family, the workplace, the circle of friends, or the religious community—converge within a single communicative situation, making it impossible to conform simultaneously to the normative expectations of all of them (Marwick and Boyd 2011).

The unpredictability of the normative framework primarily affects perceptions of norm violation, but it also affects the entire moral-relational regulatory process of guilt. If there is no clear normative frame of reference, the starting point itself becomes uncertain: the individual cannot determine whether a norm violation has occurred, since what is appropriate for one audience may be offensive to another. On the one hand, this may lead to underperceiving norm violation: a real injury may go unnoticed because there is no unambiguous norm against which the situation can be evaluated. On the other hand, because of the plurality of norms, almost any utterance may offend some audience, leading to persistent guilt and intensified self-monitoring. The unpredictability of the normative framework, therefore, does not simply reduce guilt but renders the regulatory functioning of guilt even more unpredictable: in some situations, it may weaken guilt’s regulatory functioning, while in others it may lead to the overgeneralization of responsibility.

The intrinsically oriented person may be relatively more protected against the unpredictability of the normative framework because they possess a stable internal point of orientation that depends less on the audience’s immediate expectations. The extrinsically oriented person, by contrast—whose religious norm adherence is more strongly tied to social acceptance, status, and external feedback—is more vulnerable to the plurality of norms, more likely to experience persistent uncertainty, and more dependent on social evaluation.

5. Guilt in the Digital Religious Environment

Religious environments are typically characterized by strong, consistent, and internalized normative systems; therefore, the moral-relational regulatory role of guilt is particularly salient in this context, and the destabilizing effects of the digital medium become especially evident. Moreover, religiosity is not a unitary phenomenon, allowing examination of how this effect varies across types of religious orientation.

5.1. Specific Characteristics of the Digital Religious Environment

Over the past decade and a half, religious practice has increasingly taken digital forms: online worship services, religious events, prayer communities organized through social media, and digital pastoral care have become natural components of religious life. This process was substantially accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which also made online participation more widespread within religious communities (Campbell and Tsuria 2022). Recent work on digital religion similarly emphasizes that online and offline religious spaces are increasingly entangled rather than separate domains, and that social media’s communicative affordances shape religious identity and self-presentation (Evolvi 2022; Trysnes and Synnes 2022).

Although communal religious practice largely returned to face-to-face encounters after the pandemic, church events, worship services, and spiritual content are increasingly available online, where they can be accessed and commented on by anyone.

Research on digital religion emphasizes that it is not simply the online equivalent of face-to-face religious practice but a hybrid environment in which online and offline practices are intertwined, and in which religious experience, community, and authority take on new forms (Campbell 2012; Campbell and Tsuria 2022). In his work on the mediatization of religion, Hjarvard (2008) argues that media are not neutral transmitters, but actively shape religious experience and authority relations. This is consistent with the mediatization approach developed in Section 2.1: if the digital medium transforms the conditions of religious communication, it also affects the regulatory functioning of guilt within the religious environment.

In this environment, all four structural characteristics discussed in Section 4 are present, but they operate differently. A tension emerges between the clear norms of religious tradition and the normative uncertainty of the digital medium: while the religious community provides explicit behavioral standards, the digital medium simultaneously exposes them to multiple audiences with different value systems, each encountering competing expectations. This tension makes the religious environment a particularly suitable field of analysis for the model.

5.2. The Effects of the Structural Characteristics of the Digital Medium in the Religious Environment

In pastoral conversations or confession, partial anonymity and greater social distance may reduce shame and facilitate sincere self-disclosure. This is consistent with Suler’s (2004) observation that the loosening of inhibitions may also promote self-disclosure. At the same time, social distance may weaken the experience of responsibility and the experience of relationship restoration: the experience of forgiveness, which in face-to-face encounters is tied to the presence of the other person, may become less experientially accessible in digital form.

In the religious environment, temporal asynchronicity primarily concerns closure. In traditional religious practice, repentance, absolution, or communal forgiveness is a temporally structured closing act: there is a definite moment when the episode ends, and the relationship is restored. In the digital medium, these closing acts may be delayed or fail to occur, so that guilt—which in traditional religious practice is given reassuring closure precisely through absolution—may more easily remain unprocessed.

Mass publicity may also facilitate the emergence of a performative expression of guilt in the religious environment. The expression of repentance or moral commitment on social media may become detached from the internal process and primarily serve to shape social evaluation. This is connected to a phenomenon described in research on digital religion: religious authority relations and perceptions of religious credibility are increasingly shaped by public presence and communication (Campbell and Tsuria 2022). In such cases, the expression of guilt does not primarily serve the restoration of the relationship—including, where relevant, the relationship with God—but rather the shaping of social evaluation.

The unpredictability of the normative framework takes a specific form in the religious environment. In the digital religious environment, the religious individual is simultaneously confronted with the expectations of their own religious community and with the differing value systems of broader secular or other religious groups. Context collapse is especially salient here: what is appropriate for one’s own religious community may appear unfamiliar to a secular audience, and vice versa. This may create a persistent internal tension, leading to heightened self-reflection and uncertainty.

5.3. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Orientation as a Moderator

For the intrinsically oriented person, religious norms are internally integrated: guilt evaluates the act in relation to the person’s own value system, and reparation restores integrity. Accordingly, such a person possesses a stable internal point of orientation that is relatively independent of the audience’s immediate and diverse expectations. It may therefore be assumed that they are more resistant to the effects of the unpredictability of the normative framework and mass publicity: guilt remains primarily directed toward the restoration of the actual relationship—including the relationship to the transcendent—even when audience reactions are uncertain.

In the case of the extrinsically oriented person, by contrast, adherence to religious norms is more closely tied to social acceptance, compliance, and status. For this reason, such a person depends more strongly on external feedback and is therefore more vulnerable to the destabilizing effects of the digital medium. An opaque audience representing diverse value systems may intensify uncertainty and dependence on social evaluation; the expression of guilt is more likely to become performative; and normative uncertainty may more readily lead to either the overgeneralization of responsibility or the underperception of norm violation. This interpretation is consistent with findings linking extrinsic dimensions of religiosity to unhealthy guilt (Maltby 2005). The present model interprets this association within the context of the digital medium and proposes that the digital environment may further intensify the vulnerability associated with extrinsic orientation.

The relationship between the intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religious orientation and the digital medium is presumably not unidirectional. While religious orientation moderates the effects of the digital medium, the digital medium itself may also feed back into the character of religious orientation. The structural pressure of mass publicity and public performance may orient religious practice toward stronger dependence on social evaluation and external feedback, which can be interpreted as an intensification of certain motives associated with extrinsic religious orientation. This does not claim that the digital medium makes the religious subject “inauthentic”: in Allport and Ross’s (1967) approach, intrinsic and extrinsic orientations are not a simple binary opposition but relatively independent dimensions. Rather, it proposes that the structure of the digital medium may favor foregrounding motives associated with an extrinsic religious orientation. This bidirectional relationship is an empirically testable assumption derived from the model, which interprets religious orientation not only as a moderator of the digital medium’s effects but also as a possible consequence of the medium.

5.4. Synthesis of the Model

Based on the four structural characteristics and the moderating role of religious orientation, the article’s central thesis can be formulated as follows: the digital communication environment not only modifies the functioning of guilt but also creates interactional conditions in which the emergence, intensity, and regulatory functioning of guilt become unpredictable. Its moral-relational regulatory role is weakened: the process may become blocked at any point, or shame may become the dominant emotion.

The structural characteristics presented above do not act independently; rather, they mutually reinforce one another.

Table 1. Structural characteristics of the digital medium and the model’s assumptions concerning the regulatory functioning of guilt.

Structural Characteristic	Affected Moment(s) in the Guilt Process	Model Assumption	Related Psychological Constructs
Partial anonymity and increased social distance	Attribution of responsibility to oneself; emotional processing of guilt	Weakens responsibility attribution and emotional feedback; the norm violation may remain without the interpersonal cues that initiate the regulatory process.	Interpersonal guilt; responsibility attribution
Temporal asynchronicity	Emotional processing of guilt; consequences of guilt	Weakens emotional processing and hinders the temporally coordinated closure of the process; increases the likelihood of unresolvedness and the emergence of a contamination sequence.	Narrative integration; redemptive and contamination sequences
Mass publicity	Expression of guilt; consequences of guilt; distinction between guilt and shame	May facilitate performative expressions of guilt, make social evaluation unpredictable, and increase the likelihood that shame becomes the dominant emotion; expression may lose its function of restoring the relationship.	Shame-proneness; face-work
Unpredictability of the normative framework	Perception of norm violation; attribution of responsibility to oneself	Renders the perception of norm violation uncertain; may lead both to underperceiving real injury and to overgeneralizing responsibility.	Trait guilt; norm sensitivity
Religious orientation as a moderating factor	All moments of the guilt process	Influences the extent to which the structural characteristics exert their effects: intrinsic orientation may provide relative protection, whereas extrinsic orientation may increase vulnerability; the relationship is presumably bidirectional.	Intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation

summarizes which moments of the moral-relational regulatory process of guilt are affected by each structural characteristic, what assumptions follow from them, and which psychological constructs they are connected to. The fifth row of the table presents religious orientation as a moderating factor: it is not an independent structural characteristic, but influences the extent to which the four characteristics exert their effects.

6. Research Perspectives

The elements of the proposed model align well with established constructs in the psychological literature and are therefore suitable for formulating further research questions. In what follows, the possible starting points for examining the model are reviewed, followed by the research directions that follow from them.

The excessive assumption of responsibility associated with the model’s maladaptive direction can be captured by the construct of trait guilt (Tangney et al. 2007), whereas disproportionate responsibility for others’ well-being can be linked to the concept of interpersonal guilt. Its subtypes—survivor guilt and omnipotent responsibility guilt—can also be examined using validated instruments (O’Connor et al. 1997). The emotional dimension of the model can be connected to the appraisal-based distinction between guilt and shame (Tracy and Robins 2004), the narrative integration of the process to the redemptive and contamination sequences of narrative identity (McAdams et al. 2001), and the moderating factor to instruments measuring intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation (Allport and Ross 1967).

Three cumulative research questions can be built on this conceptual network. The first concerns whether the greater presence of the four structural characteristics is associated with a weakening of the regulatory function of guilt, that is, a decrease in the attribution of responsibility to oneself, reparative motivation, and motivation directed toward the restoration of the relationship. The second places the moderating role at the center: can it be shown that intrinsically and extrinsically oriented individuals respond differently to the same digital communication environment? The third—the most novel assumption of the model, but also the one most in need of further verification—examines the bidirectionality of the relationship: can it be shown that sustained presence in the digital medium is, over time, associated with the foregrounding of motives linked to extrinsic religious orientation? Whereas the first two questions can also be examined in cross-sectional research designs, the third requires a longitudinal approach. This identifies the most promising direction for further research on the model.

7. Conclusions

The aim of this article was to show how the moral-relational regulatory functioning of guilt can be interpreted under the conditions of the digital communication environment. Its point of departure was the recognition that guilt is a communicatively embedded process whose classical models tacitly assume the conditions of face-to-face interaction: shared norms, mutual presence, and immediate feedback. If, however, these conditions are fundamentally transformed by mediatization, the functioning of guilt cannot remain unchanged.

The proposed model integrates the theory of mediatization, the psychology of moral and self-conscious emotions, narrative identity theory, and the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation within a unified interpretive framework. It describes the functioning of guilt as a process consisting of five interrelated moments and argues that four structural characteristics of the digital medium—partial anonymity and increased social distance, temporal asynchronicity, mass publicity, and the unpredictability of the normative framework—influence all stages of the process in a similar direction, thereby weakening or destabilizing the moral-relational regulatory role of guilt.

The central claim of the article is not that guilt emerges less frequently in the digital medium, but that its functioning becomes more unpredictable. Its emergence, intensity, and closure all become less certain; consequently, the process may become blocked at any point, or shame may become the dominant emotion. The analysis based on religious orientation further shows that this effect does not operate in the same way: an internally integrated, intrinsic orientation may provide relative protection, whereas an extrinsic orientation, more strongly tied to external feedback and social evaluation, may increase vulnerability. At the same time, the relationship is presumably bidirectional: religious orientation may influence the effects of the digital medium, but sustained presence in the digital medium may also shape religious orientation itself.

The approach presented here is theoretical and does not replace empirical research. Its value lies in systematizing the functioning of guilt in the digital communication environment and in offering an interpretive framework from which empirically testable assumptions can be derived. In doing so, the article may contribute to the dialogue among psychology, media studies, and the study of religion, while also identifying research directions for further examining guilt, as a moral-relational regulatory process, under the altered communicative conditions of the digital age.