Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-w6wnr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T20:00:55.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

30 - Ownership for and against Control

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2025

By
Ori Friedman
Edited by
Kevin Tobia
Kevin Tobia
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Owners generally get to decide what happens to their property, and this is reflected in legal discussions of property rights and in how children and adults view ownership. Owners’ control over property fits with the idea that ownership serves to reduce conflicts over resources. This chapter first briefly reviews experimental research that fits with this side of ownership. However, the chapter then reviews ways that ownership can take control away from owners. One line of research work shows that children and adults think that nonowners are sometimes allowed to access and even modify property without the owner’s permission. A second line of research shows that whereas people normally have some choice in acquiring ownership or giving it up, people sometimes are viewed as acquiring and retaining ownership even when they do not want to.

Keywords

ownershipcontrolproperty lawrulescognitive development
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Jurisprudence , pp. 502 - 513
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Barker, M. A. (1983). The doctrines of specification and accession: Potential bases for legal ownership through labor? Economic and Industrial Democracy, 4(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X8300400102CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackstone, S. (1753). Commentaries on the laws of England in four books, Vol. 1. J. B. Lippincott. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/sharswood-commentaries-on-the-laws-of-england-in-four-books-vol-1Google Scholar
Bowman-Smith, C. K., Goulding, B. W., & Friedman, O. (2018). Children hold owners responsible when property causes harm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(8), 1191–1199. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000429Google ScholarPubMed
Bregant, J. (2024). Intuitive jurisprudence: What experimental jurisprudence can learn from developmental science. In Tobia, K. (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of experimental jurisprudence. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bregant, J., Wellbery, I., & Shaw, A. (2019). Crime but not punishment? Children are more lenient toward rule-breaking when the “spirit of the law” is unbroken. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 178, 266–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2018.09.019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, F. S. (1954). Dialogue on private property. Rutgers Law Review, 9(2), 357–387.Google Scholar
Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., Lieberman, M., Fischer, K., & Saltzstein, H. D. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 48(1–2), 124. https://doi.org/10.2307/1165935CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demaree-Cotton, J., & Sommers, R. (2022). Autonomy and the folk concept of valid consent. Cognition, 224, 105065. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105065CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeScioli, P., & Karpoff, R. (2015). People’s judgments about classic property law cases. Human Nature, 26(2), 184–209. doi: 10.1007/s12110-015-9230-yCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeScioli, P., Karpoff, R., & De Freitas, J. (2017). Ownership dilemmas: The case of finders versus landowners. Cognitive Science, 41(S3), 502–522. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12486CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Echelbarger, M., Roberts, S. O., & Gelman, S. A. (2022). Children’s concern for equity and ownership in contexts of individual-based and group-based inequality. Journal of Cognition and Development, 23(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2021.1956931CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenberg-Berg, N., Haake, R., Hand, M., & Sadalla, E. (1979). Effects of instructions concerning ownership of a toy on preschoolers’ sharing and defensive behaviors. Developmental Psychology, 15(4), 460–461. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.15.4.460CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elenbaas, L. (2019). Young children’s reasoning about equality and ownership in resource conflicts. Cognitive Development, 52, 100808. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2019.100808CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellickson, R. C. (1989). A hypothesis of wealth-maximizing norms: Evidence from the whaling industry. Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 5(1), 83–97.Google Scholar
Espinosa, J., & Starmans, C. (2020). Control it and it is yours: Children’s reasoning about the ownership of living things. Cognition, 202, 104319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104319CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Essler, S., & Paulus, M. (2021). Robin Hood or Matthew? Children’s reasoning about redistributive justice in the context of economic inequalities. Child Development, 92(4), 1254–1273. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13482CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feltz, A., & May, J. (2017). The means/side-effect distinction in moral cognition: A meta-analysis. Cognition, 166, 314–327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.027CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Furby, L. (1978). Possession in humans: An exploratory study of its meaning and motivation. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 6(1), 49–65. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.1978.6.1.49CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, N., Pulford, B. D., & Colman, A. M. (2013). Your money or your life: Comparing judgements in trolley problems involving economic and emotional harms, injury and death. Economics & Philosophy, 29(2), 213–233. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266267113000205CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goulding, B. W., & Friedman, O. (2018). The development of territory-based inferences of ownership. Cognition, 177, 142–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.04.013CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243–1248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hook, J. (1993). Judgments about the right to property from preschool to adulthood. Law and Human Behavior, 17(1), 135–146. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01044542CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jambon, M., & Smetana, J. G. (2014). Moral complexity in middle childhood: Children’s evaluations of necessary harm. Developmental Psychology, 50(1), 22–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032992CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanngiesser, P., Gjersoe, N., & Hood, B. M. (2010). The effect of creative labor on property-ownership transfer by preschool children and adults. Psychological Science, 21(9), 1236–1241. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610380701CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanngiesser, P., & Hood, B. M. (2014). Not by labor alone: Considerations for value influence use of the labor rule in ownership transfers. Cognitive Science, 38(2), 353–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12095CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kanngiesser, P., Itakura, S., & Hood, B. M. (2014). The effect of labour on ownership decisions in two cultures: Developmental evidence from Japan and the United Kingdom. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 32(3), 320–329. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjdp.12043CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Katz, L. (2008). Exclusion and exclusivity in property law. University of Toronto Law Journal, 58(3), 275–315. https://doi.org/10.3138/utlj.58.3.275CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knobe, J. (2003). Intentional action and side effects in ordinary language. Analysis, 63(3), 190–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, S., & Leslie, A. M. (2022). Preschoolers use the means principle in their moral judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(11), 2893–2909. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001221Google ScholarPubMed
Levine, S., Mikhail, J., & Leslie, A. M. (2018). Presumed innocent? How tacit assumptions of intentional structure shape moral judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(11), 1728–1747. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000459Google ScholarPubMed
Li, Z., Ni, X., Zhu, L., & Li, J. (2021). Chinese preschoolers’ ownership reasoning based on first possession heuristic. PloS One, 16(12), e0260335. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260335CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, Z., Zhu, L., Wan, Y., Li, J., & Yu, J. (2020). Effect of transfer type on labor’s role in ownership judgments. PsyCh Journal, 9(4), 553–561. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.340CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDermott, C. H., & Noles, N. S. (2018). The role of age, theory of mind, and linguistic ability in children’s understanding of ownership. PloS One, 13(10), e0206591. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206591CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Merrill, T. W. (1998). Property and the right to exclude. Nebraska Law Review, 77(4), 730–755.Google Scholar
Merrill, T. W. (2009). Accession and original ownership. Journal of Legal Analysis, 1(2), 459–510. doi: 10.1093/jla/1.2.459CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, J. C., Turri, J., & Friedman, O. (2014). For the greater goods? Ownership rights and utilitarian moral judgment. Cognition, 133(1), 79–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.05.018CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morewedge, C. K. (2021). Psychological ownership: Implicit and explicit. Current Opinion in Psychology, 39, 125–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.10.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nadler, J., & McDonnell, M. H. (2012). Moral character, motive, and the psychology of blame. Cornell Law Review, 97, 255–304.Google Scholar
Nancekivell, S. E., Friedman, O., & Gelman, S. A. (2019). Ownership matters: People possess a naïve theory of ownership. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 102–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.008CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neary, K. R., & Friedman, O. (2014). Young children give priority to ownership when judging who should use an object. Child Development, 85(1), 326–337. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12120CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neary, K. R., Friedman, O., & Burnstein, C. L. (2009). Preschoolers infer ownership from “control of permission.” Developmental Psychology, 45(3), 873–876. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014088CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nichols, S., & Mallon, R. (2006). Moral dilemmas and moral rules. Cognition, 100(3), 530–542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.07.005CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noles, N. S., Keil, F. C., Bloom, P., & Gelman, S. A. (2012). Children’s and adults’ intuitions about who can own things. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 12(3–4), 265–286. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685373-12342076CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peñalver, E. M. (2010). The illusory right to abandon. Michigan Law Review, 109(2), 191–219.Google Scholar
Penner, J. E. (1996). The “bundle of rights” picture of property. UCLA Law Review, 43(3), 711–820.Google Scholar
Pesowski, M. L., Nancekivell, S. E., Tasimi, A., & Friedman, O. (2022). Ownership and value in childhood. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 4(1), 161–183. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120920-041124CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierce, J. L., Kostova, T., & Dirks, K. T. (2003). The state of psychological ownership: Integrating and extending a century of research. Review of General Psychology, 7(1), 84–107. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.7.1.84CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, H. S. (2013). Effects of ownership rights on conflicts between toddler peers. Infancy, 18(2), 256–275. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2012.00121.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, M. F., Rakoczy, H., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Young children understand and defend the entitlements of others. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116(4), 930–944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.06.013CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaw, A., Li, V., & Olson, K. R. (2012). Children apply principles of physical ownership to ideas. Cognitive Science, 36(8), 1383–1403. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01265.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shoked, N. (2014). The duty to maintain. Duke Law Journal, 64, 437–513.Google Scholar
Simons, K. W. (2018). Self-defense, necessity, and the duty to compensate, in law and morality. San Diego Law Review, 55(2), 357–380.Google Scholar
Smith, H. E. (2012). Property as the law of things. Harvard Law Review, 125(7), 1691–1726.Google Scholar
Snare, F. (1972). The concept of property. American Philosophical Quarterly, 9(2), 200–206.Google Scholar
Stake, J. E. (2004). The property ‘instinct’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 359(1451), 1763–1774. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1551Google ScholarPubMed
Starmans, C., & Friedman, O. (2016). If I am free, you can’t own me: Autonomy makes entities less ownable. Cognition, 148, 145–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.11.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stonehouse, E. E., & Friedman, O. (2021). Unsolicited but acceptable: Non-owners can access property if the owner benefits. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(1), 135–144. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000877Google ScholarPubMed
Stonehouse, E. E., & Friedman, O. (2022). Attributing ownership to hold others accountable. Cognition, 225, 105106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van de Vondervoort, J. W., & Friedman, O. (2015). Parallels in preschoolers’ and adults’ judgments about ownership rights and bodily rights. Cognitive Science, 39(1), 184–198. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12154CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yaron, R. (1966). The goring ox in Near Eastern laws. Israel Law Review, 1(3), 396–406. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021223700013881CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×