Project on “Guilty Pleasures”
Why we enjoy things we feel ashamed of
- von Jennifer Meina
- 24.04.2026
Watching reality TV, eating fast food, or spontaneously booking a cheap flight – many people are familiar with the feeling of enjoying something that is actually considered “bad.” These and other so-called “guilty pleasures” seem like a typical phenomenon of the present. However, a new interdisciplinary research project at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen shows that ambivalent moments of enjoyment have a long history and are closely linked to social norms, power relations, and cultural conflicts. The project is funded with around €440,000 by the VolkswagenStiftung.*
The project asks how taste and choices regarding consumption are negotiated—and what is at stake for society in the process. While previous research has primarily examined why individuals label certain things as “guilty pleasures,” this project shifts the focus to the discourses themselves: when and why do such preferences become the subject of particularly intense debates? And what do these debates accomplish? The project looks beyond art and entertainment to include areas such as travel, food, sexuality, and politics, as Dr. Roxanne Phillips and Dr. Paul Buckermann of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) Essen explain. The two researchers lead the project together with Dr. Morten Paul (RUB).
A key finding is that “guilty pleasures” are by no means a product of modern pop culture. As early as the 18th century, “sinful pleasure” was a topic of debate—for instance in religious texts warning against morally questionable behavior. Later, the concept appears in discussions about consumption, luxury, and social change. The three researchers argue that such discourses gain particular significance in times when social orders, such as those structured by class or gender, and culturally drawn distinctions, for example between high and popular culture, are in flux.
As Buckermann and Phillips explain, “guilty pleasures” also always reveal something about power and status. What counts as “good” or “bad” taste is continually renegotiated in public debates, through media, institutions, and social groups. “At the same time, the term contains a contradiction: people devalue something as inappropriate, yet still admit—whether in private among friends or even in public opinion columns—that they take pleasure in it.”
Today, these contradictions are politically charged more heavily than in the past. In times of climate crisis, social tensions, and populist debates, questions of consumption and responsibility are increasingly discussed in more polarized and escalatory ways—not least due to developments in media technologies. Feelings of guilt associated with air travel or the purchase of fast fashion are one example. The research suggests that “guilty pleasure” discourses take up these broader societal conflicts and render them visible in seemingly mundane everyday choices.
About the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI)
KWI Essen is an interdisciplinary research institute within the University Alliance Ruhr that examines societal challenges from a humanities and cultural sciences perspective and promotes exchange between academia and the public.
* The project “Towards a Genealogy of Guilty Pleasures: Performing Reflexive Consumption” by Dr. Roxanne Phillips, Dr. Paul Buckermann (both UDE/KWI), and Dr. Morten Paul (RUB) is funded with approximately €440,000 as part of the Volkswagen Foundation’s initiative “Open Up – New Research Spaces for the Humanities and Cultural Studies.” Of this amount, around €313,000 is allocated to UDE, where the KWI is based. The initiative supports exploratory, high-risk research that develops new questions and perspectives on previously underexplored fields