Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T08:27:06.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ownership psychology, its antecedents and consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2023

Pascal Boyer Open the ORCID record for Pascal Boyer [Opens in a new window]
Pascal Boyer*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology & Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA [email protected]; http://www.pascalboyer.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Commentators discussed the coherence and validity of a minimalist approach to ownership intuitions, in ways that make it possible to clarify the model, re-evaluate its cognitive underpinnings, and sketch some of its implications. This response summarizes the model; addresses issues concerning the need for a special technical lexicon when describing cognitive semantics; the psychology involved in contexts of competitive acquisition and their consequences for possession and use of rival resources; the role of cooperative expectations in creating mutually beneficial allocation of resources; the consequences of ownership psychology for social interaction and the production of social norms of property; and the relations between psychological processes and legal institutions in the domain, before proposing some final thoughts.

Type
Author's Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 46 , 2023 , e355
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aikhenvald, A. Y., & Mihas, E. I. (2019). Genders and classifiers: A cross-linguistic typology. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
André, J.-B., & Baumard, N. (2011). The evolution of fairness in a biological market. Evolution, 650, 1447–1456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
André, J.-B., Debove, S., Fitouchi, L., & Baumard, N. (2022). Moral cognition as a Nash product maximizer: An evolutionary contractualist account of morality. PsyArxiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/2hxgu.Google Scholar
Attas, D. (2006). Fragmenting property. Law and Philosophy, 25, 119–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barclay, P. (2016). Biological markets and the effects of partner choice on cooperation and friendship. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 33–38. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumard, N., André, J.-B., & Sperber, D. (2013). A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner-choice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36(1), 59–78. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11002202.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blake, P. R., & Harris, P. L. (2009). Children's understanding of ownership transfers. Cognitive Development, 24, 133–145. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.01.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, P. (2018). Minds make societies. How cognition explains the world humans create. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, P., & Bergstrom, B. (2011). Threat-detection in child development: An evolutionary perspective. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35, 1034–1041.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyer, P., & Petersen, M. B. (2012). The naturalness of (many) social institutions: Evolved cognition as their foundation. Journal of Institutional Economics, 8, 1–25. doi:10.1017/S1744137411000300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cashdan, E. (1994). A sensitive period for learning about food. Human Nature, 5, 279–291. doi:10.1007/bf02692155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Coase, R. H. (1960). The problem of social cost. Journal of Law and Economics, 3, 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: Toward an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science. Cognition, 50(1–3), 41–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The evolution of morality (pp. 27–51). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curry, O. S., Alfano, M., Brandt, M. J., & Pelican, C. (2022). Moral molecules: Morality as a combinatorial system. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 13(4), 1039–1058.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeScioli, P., & Wilson, B. J. (2011). The territorial foundations of human property. Evolution and Human Behavior, 32, 297–304. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.10.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dubreuil, B. (2010). Human evolution and the origins of hierarchies: The state of nature. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elbaek, C., Mitkidis, P., Aarøe, L., & Otterbring, T. (2021). Material scarcity and unethical economic behavior: A systematic review and meta-analysis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El Haji, A., & Onderstal, S. (2019). Trading places: An experimental comparison of reallocation mechanisms for priority queuing. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 28(4), 670–686.Google Scholar
Ellickson, R. (1991). Order without law: How neighbors settle disputes. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espinosa, J., & Starmans, C. (2020). Control it and it is yours: Children's reasoning about the ownership of living things. Cognition, 202, 104319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eswaran, M., & Neary, H. M. (2014). An economic theory of the evolutionary emergence of property rights. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 6(3), 203–226.Google Scholar
Fagundes, D. (2017). The social norms of waiting in line. Law & Social Inquiry, 42(4), 1179–1207. doi:10.1111/lsi.12256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, O. (2010). Necessary for possession: How people reason about the acquisition of ownership. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1161–1169. doi:10.1177/0146167210378513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedman, O., & Neary, K. R. (2008). Determining who owns what: Do children infer ownership from first possession? Cognition, 107, 829–849. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.002.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedman, O., Neary, K. R., Defeyter, M. A., & Malcolm, S. L. (2011). Ownership and object history. In Ross, H. H. & Friedman, O. (Eds.), Origins of ownership of property: New directions for child and adolescent development (Vol. 132, pp. 79–90). Wiley.Google Scholar
Friedman, O., & Ross, H. (2011). Twenty-one reasons to care about the psychological basis of ownership. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011, 1–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gelman, S. A., Manczak, E. M., & Noles, N. S. (2012). The nonobvious basis of ownership: Preschool children trace the history and value of owned objects. Child Development, 83, 1732–1747. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01806.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gintis, H. (2007). The evolution of private property. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 64(1), 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glackin, S. N. (2014). Back to bundles: Deflating property rights, again. Legal Theory, 20, 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn-Holbrook, J., Holbrook, C., & Haselton, M. G. (2011). Parental precaution: Neurobiological means and adaptive ends. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(4), 1052–1066.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haidt, J., & Joseph, C. (2007). The moral mind: How 5 sets of innate intuitions guide the development of many culture-specific virtues, and perhaps even modules. The Innate Mind, 3(2007), 367–391.Google Scholar
Harris, J. W. (1996). Property and justice. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heintz, C. (2004). Introduction: Why there should be a cognitive anthropology of science. Journal of Cognition & Culture, 4, 391–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hohfeld, W. N. (2014[1923]). Fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning: And other legal essays – primary source edition. Bibliolife DBA of Bibilio Bazaar II LLC.Google Scholar
Honoré, A. M. (1961). Ownership. In A. M. Honoré (Ed.), Making law bind (pp. 161–192). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Humphrey, C. (1991). “Icebergs”, barter, and the mafia in provincial Russia. Anthropology Today, 7(2), 8–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (1995). Languages of the mind: Essays on mental representation. Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Johnson, A. W., & Earle, T. K. (2000). The evolution of human societies: From foraging group to agrarian state (Vol. 2nd). Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katamba, F. (2003). Bantu nominal morphology. In Nurse, D. & Philippson, G. (Eds.), The Bantu languages (pp. 103–120). Routledge.Google Scholar
Kendler, K. S., Gardner, C. O., Annas, P., & Lichtenstein, P. (2008). The development of fears from early adolescence to young adulthood: A multivariate study. Psychological Medicine, 38, 1759–1769. doi:10.1017/s0033291708002936.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lieberman, D., & Patrick, C. (2018). Objection: Disgust, morality, and the law. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, L. (1969). Queue culture: The waiting line as a social system. American Journal of Sociology, 75(3), 340–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, J. (2008). The archaeological evidence for social evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 251–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J., & Price, G. R. (1973). The logic of animal conflict. Nature, 246(5427), 15–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morewedge, C. K. (2021). Psychological ownership: Implicit and explicit. Current Opinion in Psychology, 39, 125–132.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nancekivell, S. E., Friedman, O., & Gelman, S. A. (2019). Ownership matters: People possess a naïve theory of ownership. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 102–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noles, N. S., & Gelman, S. A. (2014). You can't always want what you get: Children's intuitions about ownership and desire. Cognitive Development, 31, 59–68. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2014.02.002.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pesowski, M. L., & Powell, L. J. (2023). Ownership as privileged utility. Cognitive Development, 66, 101321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pietraszewski, D. (2016). How the mind sees coalitional and group conflict: The evolutionary invariances of n-person conflict dynamics. Evolution and Human Behavior, 37, 470–480. doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.04.006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qutaybah, I. (2019). The excellence of the Arabs [translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb]. New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rakoczy, H., & Schmidt, M. F. H. (2013). The early ontogeny of social norms. Child Development Perspectives, 7, 17–21. doi:10.1111/cdep.12010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rakoczy, H., Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2008). The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games. Developmental Psychology, 44, 875–881. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.44.3.875, 10.1037/0012-1649.44.3.875.supp (Supplemental).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robinson, P. H., Kurzban, R., & Jones, O. (2007). The origins of shared intuitions of justice. Vanderbilt Law Review, 60, 1633–1688.Google Scholar
Rochat, P. (2011). Possession and morality in early development. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011, 23–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rochat, P. (2014). Origins of possession: Owning and sharing in development. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, B. (2005). Social traps and the problem of trust. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanderson, S. K. (2014). Human nature and the evolution of society. Avalon Publishing.Google Scholar
Service, E. R. (1962). Primitive social organization, an evolutionary perspective. Random House.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture: A naturalistic approach. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (1997). Intuitive and reflective beliefs. Mind and Language, 12, 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (2006). Conceptual tools for a naturalistic approach to cultural evolution. In Levinson, S. C. & Pierre, J. (Eds.), Evolution and culture: A Fyssen foundation symposium (pp. 147–165). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Stake, J. E. (2004). The property “instinct”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 359(1451), 1763.Google ScholarPubMed
Starmans, C., & Friedman, O. (2016). If I am free, you can't own me: Autonomy makes entities less ownable. Cognition, 148, 145–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strassmann, J. E., & Queller, D. C. (2014). Privatization and property in biology. Animal Behaviour, 92, 305–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sznycer, D., & Patrick, C. (2020). The origins of criminal law. Nature Human Behaviour, 4(5), 506–516.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tatone, D., Geraci, A., & Csibra, G. (2015). Giving and taking: Representational building blocks of active resource-transfer events in human infants. Cognition, 137, 47–62. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.12.007.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19–136). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the banker's paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In Runciman, W. G., Smith, J. M. et al. (Eds.), Evolution of social behaviour patterns in primates and man (pp. 119–143). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Price, M. E. (2006). Cognitive adaptations for n‐person exchange: the evolutionary roots of organizational behavior. Managerial and Decision Economics, 27(2‐3), 103–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vicovaro, M. (2021). Intuitive physics and cognitive algebra: A review. European Review of Applied Psychology, 71(5), 100610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhou, R., & Soman, D. (2008). Consumers’ waiting in queues: The role of first-order and second-order justice. Psychology & Marketing, 25(3), 262–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar