Guilt, Psychological Well-Being and Religiosity in Contemporary Cinema

Abstract

This study explains the change in meaning that psychology has given to the relationship between religiosity and psychological well-being since the beginning of the 20th century, dating it back to the deep change introduced by post-modernity. Guilt is interpreted as a paradigm of this change in meaning, and the reflection that the different ways of understanding guilt have had on the screen is analyzed. The Content Analysis of a sample of 94 films showed 5 modes of expression of guilt that can be placed on a continuum from the traditional Judeo-Christian model that serves as a benchmark—harm-repentance-penitence-forgiveness—to the removal of guilt as a requirement for self-realization. The other three models emerge between these two poles: the absence of guilt as a psychiatric pathology; the resignification of the guilty act for the reduction in dissonance; and idealized regret at no cost. Studying guilt-coping models of the films allows us to infer the hypothesis that a large part of the current positive view of religiosity in psychological well-being is related to a culture that does not demand psychological suffering as a requirement for a full experience of spirituality.