First Possession, History, and Young Children's Ownership Judgments

Abstract

It is impossible to perceive who owns an object; this must be inferred. One way that children make such inferences is through a first possession bias--when two agents each use an object, children judge the object belongs to the one who used it first. Two experiments show that this bias does not result from children directly inferring ownership from first possession; the experiments instead support an alternative account according to which the first possession bias reflects children's historical reasoning. In Experiment 1, eighty-five 3- to 5-year-olds only based inferences on first possession when it was informative about the past. In Experiment 2, thirty-two 5-year-olds based ownership judgments on testimony about past contact, while disregarding testimony about future contact.

Creation in judgments about the establishment of ownership

“…Crucially, the agent acted without directly contacting the target-instead the agent threw some thing at it. For example, in some scenarios the agent threw a rock at a can, crushing 1 This claim is also supported by developmental studies show that children consider objects history in their ownership judgments (e.g., Friedman, Van de Vondervoort, Defeyter, & Neary, 2013;Gelman, Manczak, & Noles, 2012;Gelman, Noles, & Stilwell, 2014;Nancekivell & Friedman, 2014). 2 Our discussion of possession principally concerns the claim that taking physical possession of a non-owned object establishes ownership over it.…”

Young Children's Understanding of Ownership

“…For example, when possession is pitted against testimony about ownership, 3‐ and 4‐year‐olds base ownership judgments on testimony, suggesting that they view testimony as the more definitive source of information (Blake et al., ; Neary & Friedman, in press, Experiment 2B). Likewise, first possession is trumped by strong age and gender stereotypes, and by information about an object's history (Friedman et al., ; Malcolm et al., in press). But it remains unknown whether children appreciate the definitiveness of causally relevant information about how an object was acquired.…”

Young children’s preference for unique owned objects

“…Thus, people may require experience with museums, economic markets, and/or the signaling value of luxury objects in order to value object features that are neither obvious nor functionally relevant. In contrast, others have proposed that high evaluation of unique objects follows from a foundational, early-emerging belief that objects are imbued with their history (Friedman, Vondervoort, Defeyter, & Neary, 2013; Gelman, 2013; Nancekivell & Friedman, 2014; Newman, in press). On this view, even young children should care about an object's past when evaluating its desirability.…”