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Gratitude is about appreciating benefits from external sources that matter to your personal life. But what does personal relevance really mean? The most obvious examples involve first-hand benefits: You win the lottery, receive a promotion, or enjoy a memorable evening with friends.
Yet sometimes we feel gratitude for benefits that others receive. I was overjoyed and filled with gratitude when my spouse was offered a full-time faculty position at my university.
Such responses are less common than gratitude for directly self-relevant benefits, but they are far from rare. One study found that when Canadian undergraduates were given a generic gratitude prompt, 22% described at least one benefit that happened to someone else.
Researchers call such responses vicarious gratitude.
To be clear, vicarious gratitude does not mean feeling grateful to others for what they have done for you. It refers to feeling grateful for someone else’s positive outcome even when you don’t directly benefit. It’s about feeling thankful when a coworker receives an award or when a friend finds love.
Why does this happen? To explore this question, I turn to an ancient story from the Gook of Ruth.
The Story of Naomi and Ruth
The Book of Ruth is one of my favorite stories from antiquity. Its two main characters are women—remarkable, given the patriarchal culture in which it was written.
The book is about how an immigrant woman becomes an ancestor of a nation’s greatest king. Themes of loyalty, redemption, divine providence, immigration, genealogy, and romance weave through the story. But one thread that fascinates me is the bond between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law.
A famine drives Naomi’s family to Moab, where her two sons marry Moabite women. Tragically, Naomi’s husband and sons die. She decides to return to Bethlehem, her hometown, and urges her daughters-in-law to remain in Moab. One stays. The other daughter-in-law, Ruth, refuses.
Ruth, bound to Naomi by neither blood nor shared ethnicity, makes a radical vow of devotion. She will go where Naomi goes, live where she lives, claim Naomi’s people as her own, and worship her God. She commits not only to leaving with Naomi but to dying where Naomi dies. Moved by Ruth’s devotion, Naomi allows her to accompany her to Bethlehem.
How do we make sense of Ruth’s commitment? Loyalty alone doesn’t quite capture the breadth and intensity of her vow.
Inclusion of the Other in the Self
Ruth’s vow illustrates a psychological principle known as inclusion of the other in the self, or IOS. (For iPhone users, I know this is confusing, but, here, IOS doesn’t refer to the operating system running on your mobile phone.)
IOS refers to the degree to which you experience others as part of who you are. When IOS is strong, the boundaries between self and other become blurred. You think in terms of we rather than you and I.
Researchers measure IOS using a simple visual tool: seven pairs of circles ranging from completely separate to almost completely overlapping. Participants select the pair that best represents their relationship with someone, such as a partner or friend.
When your sense of self expands to include another person, their joys and sorrows begin to register as your own. Their successes feel personally meaningful. Their gratitude evokes your gratitude.
This helps explain vicarious gratitude. If others’ benefits become, in some sense, yours, too, their blessings will naturally stir thankfulness in you.
Two Extremes to Avoid
Is a strong IOS healthy? As with many things in life, the answer lies between extremes.
If your identity becomes completely fused with another’s, you risk losing your individuality. Such fusion can manifest in controlling or enmeshed relationships, where privacy and autonomy disappear. That is not healthy.
Gratitude Essential Reads
But consider the opposite extreme: a self-concept entirely sealed off from others. Imagine living as though the top left, non-overlapping circles represent all your relationships. Nothing that happens to others affects you. You are untouched by their joy, unmoved by their sorrow. That may feel safe. But is your life meaningful?
Mattering is a fundamental psychological need. We want to matter to others, and we want others to matter to us. And one way we experience mutual mattering is by allowing our circles of identity to overlap.
A self-concept that intersects with others gives us access to more joy than we could ever generate alone. Gratitude becomes less a solo emotion and more a shared celebration.
As a professor in a U.S.-based counseling psychology program, I sometimes wonder whether therapy in the United States has overemphasized firm boundaries. Boundaries matter. Enmeshed relationships are harmful.
But maybe we don’t highlight enough the goodness of healthy interdependence and the value of overlapping identities with people who cherish us and enrich our lives.
Let me be up-front about how I think about relationships: It is normal and healthy to care about others’ well-being, to root for their success, to share in their joys and sorrows, and to feel grateful for their blessings. That has been part of the human experience across cultures and time.
Practicing Vicarious Gratitude
Gratitude offers a window into how much others are included in our sense of self.
If nearly all your gratitude is vicarious, you may be living your life almost entirely through others. Your IOS may be too strong. You may be losing your sense of self.
But if your gratitude never extends beyond your own blessings, your sense of self may be bounded by stone walls, sturdy but closed to shared joy. In that case, you may be experiencing only a slice of what gratitude can be.
That’s like bringing your favorite dish to a potluck but refusing to taste anything else. Gratitude for others’ blessings turns a private meal into a banquet.
Just as IOS may facilitate vicarious gratitude, practicing vicarious gratitude, I suspect, can strengthen IOS, deepening relationships.
If you already engage in gratitude reflections, consider adding a small dose of vicarious gratitude.
Reflect on the blessings of a significant other—a partner, spouse, family member, or close friend. Then widen the circle. Think about a new friend or a trusted coworker. Learn what is happening in their lives. Be curious. Give thanks for their blessings. Rejoice when they rejoice.
Over time, you may find that practicing vicarious gratitude quietly expands your self-concept, shaping you into someone more attuned to others, more relationally grounded, and more capable of shared joy. Gratitude does not have to stop at your own doorstep. It can expand outward.
When you rise, I rejoice.
This piece is Part 5 of a miniseries on the varieties of goodness. It also appears in my Substack newsletter on the science and practice of gratitude.
