Poster #35 - Judgments about Whether Natural Foods are Owned Across Ages and Cultures

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Young children often assume that artifacts are owned, but that natural kinds are not (e.g., Van de Vondervoort & Friedman, 2012). Natural foods, like vegetables and fruits, provide an interesting avenue for exploring these differing kind-based expectations, as these foods can be construed as artifacts (i.e., they have a history of human intervention and human-serving functions) or as natural kinds (i.e., children know these foods are grown, rather than manufactured in a factory; Girgis & Nguyen, 2015). These expectations may also differ based on context. For example, natural foods could be construed differently depending on where they are located (i.e., indoors or outdoors). Moreover, culture may influence these expectations, as people from different cultures are likely to have distinct patterns of experience with nature and the growth of natural foods.

To explore these issues, we recruited children and adults from the United States and from Egypt. Egypt is distinctive in many respects from the US: it is a collectivist, paternalistic society and one of the most population dense countries in the world. We tested a total of 80 four-year-olds and 83 adults from the US and Egypt. Participants were shown pictures of 12 objects, and asked if each belonged to anyone (“Look at this. Does this belong to anyone?”): 4 non-food natural kinds (e.g., sun), 4 natural foods growing outside (e.g., tomato on vine), and 4 natural foods indoors (e.g., tomato on table). We conducted separate 2 (age-group) x 3 (item) ANOVAs for “yes” responses from each culture; see Figure 1. For the US sample, there were main effects of age-group, F(1,100) = 19. 89, p < .001, and item, F(1.73, 173.86) = 160.03, p < .001, but these were qualified by an age-group x item interaction, F(1.73, 173.86) = 3.38, p = .043. For both age-groups, participants were more likely to view indoor natural foods as owned than outdoor ones, and more likely to view foods in both locations as owned than non-food natural kinds, ps ≤ .001. For the Egyptian sample, the ANOVA only found a main effect of item, F(2,114) = 7.03, p = .001. Follow-up analyses revealed that natural foods in both locations were viewed as owned more often than the non-foods, ps ≤ .010.

These findings suggest that both cultures have similar expectations of ownership for natural foods versus non-food natural kinds, but also reveal cross-cultural differences in patterns of development. Although further work is needed, our findings suggest that while item-location (i.e., indoors, outdoors) is a strong cue for food ownership in the US, it was not in Egypt, and may not function similarly in other cultures as well. More generally, the findings support other recent work (Kanngiesser, Rossano, & Tomasello, 2015) in suggesting that at least some aspect of the psychology of ownership are susceptible to strong cultural influence.

Authors

• Helana Girgis, Hartwick College
  Presenting Author

• Ori Friedman, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Simone Nguyen, University of North Carolina Wilmington
  Non-Presenting Author