Children's ascriptions of property rights with changes of ownership
Section snippets
Experiment 1
Previous research suggests that buying something in a store may be a relatively apparent means of ownership transfer (Cram & Ng, 1989). Purchasing is a common activity in contemporary Western society, one that adults accept as clearly establishing the buyer as the owner. Experiment 1 explored whether young children believe that buyers acquire property rights, and, critically, that sellers relinquish their rights. Beliefs were assessed by having participants adjudicate disagreements about
Participants
Participants were 29 adults (19 female), 30 (17 female) 4–5-year-old children (M = 5–0 years, range 4–3 to 5–11) and 30 (16 female) 7–8- year-old children (M = 7–9, range 7–0 to 8–10). Participants were predominantly Caucasian and from middle-class or upper-middle class backgrounds. Adults were recruited from undergraduate courses at a large public university; children came from several preschools and after-school programs.
Design and procedure
Each participant heard three stories about conflict between an owner and a
Results
For each question a participant could indicate that the owner gets to decide or that the non-owner (finder, borrower, seller) gets to decide. Fig. 1 presents the mean proportions of owner responses by age and story context. The control conflict (over re-categorization) is excluded from these means, as re-categorization was not expected to be transferred with ownership. The critical question was whether participants would treat recipients of ownership as original owners. As is evident from Fig. 1
Discussion
Consistent with past research, even young children denied that transfers of physical possession constituted changes in ownership/property rights. People who found or borrowed property did not acquire the rights to use it against the wishes of the original owners. Adults and older children did accept that some transfers effectively transferred rights. Someone who buys an object acquires rights to control it and, critically, the seller gives up those rights. Young children however, did not
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 directly examines intuitions about transfers by asking the same participants to evaluate story characters’ property rights both before and after changes of ownership. The central question is whether young children's assignments of property rights will follow the transfer; do they accept that rights may be gained and lost via effective transfers of ownership? One alternative hypothesis is that young children hold a “first owner” principle. The person who originally owned the
Participants
Sixteen adults (9 female), 19 (11 female) 4–5-year-olds (M = 4–7, range, 4–0 to 5–3) and 19 (8 female) 7–8-years old (M = 8–0, range = 7–1 to 8–11) participated in the study. Participants were predominantly White and from middle- or upper-middle class backgrounds. Adults were recruited from undergraduate courses at a large public university, children from preschools and after-school programs.
Design and procedure
Each participant heard eight stories about conflicts between owners and non-owners. During each story
Results
Fig. 3 shows frequencies of acceptance of the proposed actions, that is, how often participants answered ‘yes’ to the question of whether a person can alter a feature of an object. There were two stories for each of four conditions (owner/good, owner/bad, non-owner/good, non-owner/bad). Since participants made two judgments per story (before and after transition), the maximum score for each condition is four. Fig. 3 shows two major findings. First, at all ages responses are based on ownership
Discussion
Participants in Experiment 2 displayed two consistent patterns of judgments regarding transfers of ownership. As in Experiment 1, a majority of participants reliably indicated that an owner could control their property against the wishes of a non-owner. The distinctive finding in Experiment 2 was that even many young children tracked owners’ rights across transfers. Owners could give up or lose their property rights; story characters who initially lacked control of property could gain it via
General discussion
These studies explored children's and adults’ understandings of ownership transfers. They suggest important commonalities between preschool-aged children, young school-aged children, and adults. Participants indicated that owners have the right to control their property in the face of demands by non-owners. They also responded that non-owners ought to defer to the wishes of owners regarding the use, alteration, lending, and disposal of those objects. The major difference between children and
Acknowledgment
Thanks to Peter Blake for helpful comments on a previous draft.
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