Exploring the self-ownership effect: Separating stimulus and response biases.

Abstract

Although ownership is acknowledged to exert a potent influence on various aspects of information processing, the origin of these effects remains largely unknown. Based on the demonstration that self-relevance facilitates perceptual judgments (i.e., the self-prioritization effect), here we explored the possibility that ownership enhances object categorization. The results of 2 experiments supported this prediction. Compared with items owned by a stranger (Expt. 1) or best friend (Expt. 2), those owned by the self were classified most rapidly (i.e., self-ownership effect) in an object-categorization task. To establish the basis of this effect, the processes underlying task performance were interrogated using a hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) approach. Results of these analyses revealed that self-ownership was underpinned by a response bias (i.e., starting point of evidence accumulation). These findings explicate the origin of the ownership effect during object processing. (PsycINFO Database Record

Good Me Bad Me: Prioritization of the Good-Self During Perceptual Decision-Making

“…Model comparisons showed that the best fitting model required the three-parameter model (see Supplementary Materials), consistent with the findings in prior research (Golubickis, Falben, Cunningham, & Macrae, 2018;Golubickis et al, 2017). We then extracted the parameters for each condition and tested the hypothesis by analyzing the posterior probability density of the parameters across the conditions.…”

Mine or mother’s? Exploring the self-ownership effect across cultures

“…Previously, Golubickis et al (2018) have demonstrated the benefits of self-relevance (i.e., ownership) on object categorization. In a modified ownership task, participants were initially informed that a class of items (from 2 possible categories) belonged either to the self or another person (i.e., Expt.…”

“…To explore the processes underpinning task performance, computational modeling (i.e., drift diffusion model (DDM) analysis) will be used to explicate the specific pathway (or pathways) through which ownership influences decisionmaking (e.g., Golubickis et al 2017Golubickis et al , 2018Macrae et al 2017). In any task context, there are two distinct ways in which decisional processing can be biased.…”

“…Applied successfully to a wide range of cognitive tasks (see Spaniol et al 2006;Wagenmakers 2009), a DDM analysis is useful in the current context as it has the capacity to reveal the origin of stimulus prioritization during object categorization. Previously, Golubickis et al (2018) have shown that, at least among Western participants, differences in the starting point of evidence gathering (i.e., z) underpin the self-ownership effect. Specifically, displaying an egocentric pre-decisional bias (e.g., Epley and Gilovich 2004;, participants required less evidence when responding to self-owned than either stranger-owned or friendowned items.…”

Self-prioritization during stimulus processing is not obligatory

“…Of course, ownership paradigms differ in several important respects from the shape-label matching tasks that have dominated work on this topic (Humphreys & Sui, 2016;Sui & Gu, 2017;, but perhaps most significantly in terms of the status of the stimuli on which judgments are rendered (Constable et al, 2019;Falbén et al, 2019;Golubickis, Falbén, Cunningham, & Macrae, 2018;Sui et al, 2012Sui et al, , 2013Sui et al, , 2014Truong, Roberts, & Todd, 2017). Whereas in perceptual-matching tasks geometric shapes serve as proxies for various social targets (e.g., self is a triangle, friend is a square); in ownership tasks, in contrast, everyday objects are linked with the self and others through association (e.g., self owns pens, friend owns pencils).…”