Take our Gratitude Test

Find a therapist near me

Vicarious gratitude is being thankful for a benefit that happened to someone else.

We experience vicarious gratitude because our self-concepts intersect with those of others we care about.

A self-concept that intersects with others gives us access to more joy than we could ever generate alone.

It is normal and healthy to share in others' joys and sorrows and to feel grateful for their blessings.

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........

© Psychology Today