The Gifts of Vicarious Living

Have you ever felt a surge of pride at watching a stranger succeed, or experienced secondhand embarrassment for someone you’ve never met? This is vicarious identification, an instinctive phenomenon that reveals how deeply we are wired for connection. Whether through contagious joy, vicarious embarrassment, pride, collective shame, or community trauma, we are drawn to join in collective experiences and even mirror the inner worlds of others.

Vicarious identification is defined as how we “appropriate the achievements and experiences of others to gain a sense of purpose, identity, and self-esteem”, and it’s not always negative. Positive examples include profound satisfaction when watching astronauts achieve space missions, reading breathlessly about escapades of colorful fictional characters, or cheering the success of a beloved sports team. Such shared moments can be deeply emotionally rewarding.

The Neurobiology of Vicarious Reward

Studies have explored the biological origins of vicarious experience. In a 2009 study about engaging with the achievements of strangers, researchers observed higher activity in participants’ ventral striatum and ventral anterior cingulate cortex. These two brain regions are known to modulate the intensity of pleasure when witnessing others’ joy, and the instinct to respond in a corresponding prosocial way.

Another study in 2017 revealed similar results when randomly selected individuals reacted to seeing strangers learn about personal financial windfalls or losses. Once again their ventral striatum, a region below the prefrontal cortex governing motor control and conscious processing of reward, revealed heightened activity.

A third experiment in 2011 presented participants with a moderate sum of virtual money and asked them to choose between keeping it or gifting it to a stranger. When respondents chose to donate the money, researchers observed notable reactions in their prefrontal cortex including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and medial orbitofrontal cortex. These regions are involved in productive decision-making and evaluating choices in response to one’s environment.

Family Relationships

Living Through Our Parents

One everyday example of vicarious identification is when young people grow through observing the adults around them. For example, studies have found that hearing about the experiences of older relatives greatly influences teens’ personal identity development. They use these stories as reference points for what constitutes meaningful or poor life choices, and opportunities to reflect on their own values and aspirations. 

When intergenerational messages include positivity and growth, young adults become more motivated to pursue a robust personal identity and abstain from what they’ve deemed to be undesirable life choices.

Children can also access vicarious strength from knowledge of how a caregiver has lived. A 2020 study highlighting the impact of mother-child relationships revealed that those with a positive perspective on their mother’s life outcomes were more likely to have a positive view of their own life, and achieve a stronger sense of overall well-being. These results align with the attachment influence that nurturing, supportive mothers can have on their child’s sense of self.

In this way, vicarious identification with parents, mentors, and role models allows young people to consider new experiences, behaviors, or worldviews without the pressure to internalize or agree with them right away. As they observe adults’ personal attributes and decisions, they can better discern preferences and pursue the development of healthy traits. 

Living Through Our Children

On a more cautionary note, there is much discussion around the harm parents can cause children through trying to live vicariously through their accomplishments. This type of pressure can have serious repercussions on a child’s well-being. The parent’s motivation is often tied to feelings of regret, and conscious or unconscious expectations on children to fulfill dreams the adults themselves could not achieve.

However, identifying with our children’s achievements is not always harmful. Deriving joy from your little one’s behavior and efforts is a vicarious experience reflecting prosocial instincts to join in celebrating others’ victories. This relates closely to the practice of empathy, with an emphasis on positive outcomes. A 2020 study found that the quality of emotional connection between parents and their children was the precursor for vicarious joy, confirming that the degree of emotional intimacy among family members determines how much shared pleasure they can come to feel.

The Devouring Caregiver

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875–1961) considered additional harmful ways caregivers sometimes relate with their children. Using the framework of feminine and masculine energies embedded in each person’s unconscious, he noted the universal archetype of maternal instinct and its positive and negative potential. 

Mothering instincts like birthing, generativity, and nurturing are decidedly lifegiving expressions of care. In contrast, Jung observed certain behaviors in clients who were mothers that he likened to “devouring” their young through the use of psychological, emotional, and physical manipulation. He noted the children’s corresponding struggle to individuate into well-adjusted adults, due to their lack of freedom to grow into their own personhood.

In psychoanalytic terms, such devouring caregivers are abnegating their own personality through over-identification with their child. As Jung described, “First she gives birth to children, and from then on she clings to them, for without them she has no existence whatsoever. Driven by ruthless will to power and a fanatical insistence on their own maternal rights, they often succeed in annihilating not only their own personality but also the personal lives of their children”. 

Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy

A modern diagnosable form of this devouring caregiver behavior was originally termed Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Now renamed as Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), this parent-child dysfunction often involves covert medical abuse. Signs of abuse include fabricating or inducing signs of illness, manipulating medical test results, and presenting to health professionals with excessive injuries or hospitalizations. It is estimated that roughly 1,000 of the 2.5 million cases of child abuse reported annually in the United States are the result of FDIA.

Oftentimes these parents were themselves victims of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse in childhood. While the psychology of these perpetrators is complex, it is theorized that they internalized a belief that feigning sickness is the only way to receive nurture and care. Personality disorders can also be a factor, where the strong need for attachment drives individuals to extreme actions.

Jung might have considered Münchausen by Proxy as evidence of a caregiver sublimating destructive archetypal impulses into the socially approved role of the attentive, sacrificing parent. The impact of this psychopathology is truly concerning, as the mortality rate for victims is close to 10% due to unnecessary and painful medical procedures.

Social Connections

Social Contagion and Discrimination

The desire to belong to an in-group reflects a social instinct that, when pursued uninhibitedly, can lead to the collective homogenization of beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews. Even on a neurobiological level, mirroring processes lead to group members subconsciously or consciously adopting each others’ traits.

Soberingly, if one member demonstrates negative or unethical behavior, others may justify or condone their choices out of instinctual loyalty and a sense of commitment. Such unaddressed, unethical actions can develop into systematically discriminatory behaviors and attitudes toward out-groups. This expression of the phenomenon of social contagion inevitably increases the vulnerability of minority groups to poor treatment.

Collective Experiences of Trauma

Discriminatory treatment of individuals inevitably has ripple effects on their community. For example, vicarious or secondary trauma occurs when experiences of prejudice and discrimination are inflicted on one’s family members, close friends, and even strangers with whom one has psychological group ties. Social injustices harm both victims and witnesses.

Violence toward vulnerable out-groups is known to lead to the development of chronic stress and intergenerational wounds, both of which harm group identity. On a daily basis, fear can generate chronic anxiety and hyper-vigilance that impair physical, mental, and emotional health. Such generational transmission not only creates indelible scars on group consciousness, but also impacts each individual’s feelings of being unsafe in the world.

Learning Prosocial Behavior

Fortunately, vicarious identification with an in-group can also lead to reparative actions and prosocial attitudes. Sometimes this positive contagion occurs through education about ethical choice points and ways to adopt more open-minded attitudes. Leaders can effect this type of growth in their group members, who are invested in any outcomes that improve group well-being.

Positive vicarious experience can also help to foster greater curiosity and acceptance of others. For example, a 1999 study of Finnish grade school students revealed that hearing stories about children forming close friendships with young people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds served to alter student attitudes towards foreigners as a whole. This method for cultivating intergroup tolerance was a valuable discovery given the rise in emigration to Finland at the time.

Another study in 2006 involved assigning children reading materials about friendships blossoming between British school children with disabilities, and those without. Results showed a significant decrease in prejudice and ignorance about this frequently stigmatized group. After learning about their commonalities through class story time and group discussion, the children reported stronger interest and openness to befriending children with disabilities.

Conclusion

The innate instinct for vicarious identification is a conduit for learning and growth that has lifegiving impact on people and their wider communities. It serves as a striking example of how bonded we as humans are, and how as individuals, families, and societies, we can channel our group instincts toward collective healing.

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