Poster #192 - Fixing others’ property: Young children make exceptions to property rights when violations benefit owners

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

Ownership rights allow people to use their property freely, while requiring them to ask before using others’ belongings (Snare, 1972). Children understand and uphold ownership rights beginning at age 3 (Rossano, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2011; Nancekivell & Friedman, 2014; Kim & Kalish, 2009). However, there are instances when non-owners are permitted to act on others’ property. For example, we can move misplaced property to a lost and found, and remove property to prevent harm (Neary & Friedman, 2014). Here, we examined whether children judge improving someone else’s property without permission as acceptable. If they do, it would suggest children do not rigidly uphold ownership rights, but make exceptions when violations benefit the owner.

In Experiment 1, 60 4-6-year-olds were told about a character who temporarily left a broken object in a park. Children were asked whether it would be okay for a second character to look at the object, move it a short distance, fix it, or replace it with a working version; see Figure 1. An ANOVA only revealed a main effect of action type, F(3, 171)=32.32, p<.001, as fixing the object was more acceptable than all other actions, and replacing and looking at the object were more acceptable than moving it (ps<.001). However, the test question in this experiment may have focused children’s attention on the outcome of the action, rather than the permissibility of the action itself. Hence, we used a different test question in the next experiment.

In Experiment 2, 60 4-6-year-olds were shown the same story as Experiment 1, but we asked if the actor was allowed to do each action to focus on the permissibility of the actions. Again, there was only a main effect of action type, F(3, 171)=43.84, p<.001, as fixing the object was more acceptable than all actions except looking, and looking at and replacing the object were more acceptable than moving it (ps<.001); see Figure 1. In case children were making assumptions about the relationship between the characters, we conduced another experiment that specified this information.

In Experiment 3, 120 4-6-year-olds were told the same story and asked similar questions as Experiment 2. However, we also specified the characters’ relationship. They were described as strangers or as classmates (manipulated between-subjects). There was a main effect of action type, F(3, 342)=57.00, p<.001, as fixing the object was more acceptable than all other actions, and standing near and replacing the object were more acceptable than moving it (ps<.001); see Figure 2. There was also an action type by age interaction, F(6, 342)=2.60, p=.018. The interaction resulted because 6-year-olds judged replacing the broken object as less acceptable than 4-year-olds, p=.013, and 6-year-olds also judged moving the broken object as less acceptable than both 4-year-olds, p<.001 and 5-year-olds, p=.017. Crucially, there were no effects of relationship.

Together, our findings show that young children make exceptions to ownership rights when actions benefit the owner. These findings suggest that children’s respect for ownership rights is more flexible than previously recognized.

Authors

• Emily Stonehouse, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author