Gutmensch (literally good human in German) is an ironic, sarcastic or disparaging cultural term similar to the English do-gooder. Those who use the term are implying that Gutmenschen have an overwhelming wish to be good and eagerly seek approval—further suggesting a supposed moralising and proselytising behaviour and being dogmatic, while prioritizing "right" and "correct" attitude or sentiment (Ultimate end, ethics of moral conviction) over responsible, balanced, rational and reflected decisions (ethics of responsibility). In political rhetoric Gutmensch is used as a polemic term.

Users of the term believe that people or groups of people with a specific moral attitude show a wrong or problematic behaviour. Therefore, it was used as a popular term in the 1980s for people who valued humanistic, altruistic, but also religious and human goals in life higher than utilitarian ones. They organise their actions, politics as well as their lives accordingly.

The term Gutmensch is also connected to the term political correctness and has been used in a derogatory manner since the mid-1990s. In general language use it is always used as a negatively connoted foreign appellation. A use that is meant in "a nice way" can often be found only in face-to-face conversations, such as the saying "to have a heart of gold", in generosity or in an extreme form of altruism.

The term also hints at the possible difference between "meant well" and "well done". Gutmenschen have good intentions, want to solve specific problems, or have the desire to create a better world. Those who use the term Gutmensch in a negative way evaluate the actions of Gutmenschen as not appropriate and/or unnecessary. This is how the term is used in everyday language. The German dictionary Duden, which included the term in 2000, defines Gutmensch as "a naive person who acts in an uncritical, exaggerated or tedious way while fighting for political correctness."

According to researcher Rembert Hüser, the term Gutmensch was coined as a joke made by German feuilleton writers of the "generation 1989", such as Matthias Horx [de] and Klaus Bittermann. They were among the authors of dictionaries opposing the protests of 1968. These dictionaries were written in the style of Eckardt Henscheids Dummdeutsch dictionary (dealing with language criticism) and can be considered a combination of popular and political literature. They did not differentiate between the meaning of a word and how it is used. Bittermann explains in his epilogue of the Wörterbuch des Gutmenschen (dictionary of the Gutmensch):

Literary scientist Karl Heinz Bohrer wrote at the end of his commentaries, in which he argued against the "terror of conciliation exerted by the provinciality of the Federal Republic of Germany": 'Maybe it would be best, if the Merkur established a little dictionary of the Gutmensch, including entries like tearing down the wall in our minds, constructive debates, weird thinking or stubbornness. We have long been waiting for that to happen, in vain as it turns out. Since things have not improved, we feel like we have to take care of that matter ourselves.'

Since the mid-1990s, Gutmensch has been used alongside political correctness in political and ideological debates, in order to degrade political opponents as over-moralizing.

Former Merkur publisher Kurt Scheel once claimed to have used the term first in that sense. Gutmensch was considered the "latest critical chic" in the art sections of newspapers. Writers like Klaus Bittermann came up with a variety of neologisms referring to PC and accompanying the appearance of Gutmensch. Some of them can roughly be translated as Gutmensch language, bleeding-heart language, attitudinal kitsch, attitudinal language or chatter jargon.