Biological and Developmental Origins of

Ownership Concepts

Patricia Kanngiesser

A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the require-

ments of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Science.
School of Experimental Psychology, April 2012

Word Count: 34,830

Chapter 1

Biological and Developmental Origins

of Ownership Concepts

There is no image, no painting, no visible trait, which can express the relation that

constitutes property. It is not material, it is metaphysical; it is a mere conception of

the mind.

(Bentham, 1894, p. 112)

1.1 Ownership

In 2010, the 555 Nonprofit Art Gallery in Detroit was sued by Bioresource Inc. over the
removal of a 7-by-8-foot, 1500-pound cinder block wall from an abandoned industrial
complex claiming that the wall could be worth $100,000 and more. The wall featured
a stencil of a child holding a bucket of paint, a brush and the message "I remember
when all this was trees." by the British graffiti-artist Banksy. One of the co-founders of
the gallery felt that the removal was justified because it prevented the destruction of a
"fine-art piece" (Stryker, 15 May 2010).
Who is the legitimate owner of the graffiti? The artist who painted it on the wall?
The company that owned the wall? Or the art gallery that put effort into removing
and preserving the graffiti? This case represents one of the more curious examples
of how disputes over ownership pervade every-day-life. How is it possible that every

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

human society has at least some form of ownership (be it private, collective, or common
ownership)? Is it a fundamental part of our psychology to have possessions and to exert
control over things in our environment?
Artefacts appear early in the archaeological record. The first simple stone tool arte-
facts, the so-called "Oldowan stone tool industry", are dating back to about 2.5 mil-
lion years ago (Semaw et al., 1997) - a time even before modern humans had emerged.
Among modern humans the production and use of symbolic artefacts such as shell
beads began as early as 90,000 years ago (Vanhaeren et al., 2006; Bouzouggar et al.,
2007), but unfortunately the archaeological record reveals little about how access to
objects and their use was regulated in prehistoric times. The first explicit rules regard-
ing ownership can be traced back about 4000 years to the first known written code of
law that contained among other things rules regarding lost and stolen property (The
Code of Hammurabi, 1772 BC). Moreover, in the 5th century BC the first written Roman
law dedicated two of its twelve tables to laws of property ownership (Duodecim Tabu-
larum, 451-450 BC). In addition, Greek philosophers like Plato (424/423 - 348/347 BC)
and Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) began a philosophical debate about how to best regulate
ownership and possession of things (Waldron, 2004). Ownership has thus preoccupied
humans for millennia. The philosopher David Hume famously claimed that without
conventions regulating property ownership, ownership disputes would be ubiquitous
and life in peace and harmony impossible (Hume, 1739/2000).
Beyond these legal and philosophical concerns, ownership of objects has been found
to have significant effects on human behaviour. Simply owning an object leads to a
greater valuation and a reluctance to part with it, known as the "endowment effect"
(Knetsch, 1989). People also show enhanced memory for their own objects over some-
one else’s objects (Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald, & Neil Macrae, 2008). Even the way
objects are handled depends on whether these objects are others’ property or one’s own
(Constable, Kritikos, & Bayliss, 2011). Finally, most people also treasure certain posses-
sions - in particular, those with high emotional significance like their early childhood
attachment objects - and treat them differently than otherwise identical copies (Hood

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

& Bloom, 2008). It has been suggested that ownership of objects plays such an impor-
tant role in people’s lives because it can be understood as an extension of the self into
external objects (James, 1890/1950; Belk, 1988).

1.2 Defining Ownership

Philosophers, legal scholars, and more recently, psychologists and biologists, have all
attempted to define ownership. Generally speaking, these definitions fall into two cat-
egories: one group views ownership as a social institution that is a unique construct of
the human mind and/or human societies and thus per definition precludes non-human
animals (from here on "animals") from showing ownership-related behaviours. The
other group often criticises this stance and favours an evolutionary explanation of own-
ership, often pointing out parallels between ownership-related behaviours in animals
and humans. In the following paragraphs, I will briefly discuss the two positions.

1.2.1 Ownership as a social institution

According to the philosopher John Searle, there are two types of facts in the world: "so-
cial facts" which are features of the world that only exist because of shared social rules
and "physical facts" which exist independent of social agreement (Searle, 1996). Take
the following of John Searle’s examples to illustrate what he means by a social fact: a
particular piece of paper only counts as a £10 note (i.e. has the status function of a £10
note) because of a shared convention in a community that this particular piece of paper
represents the value of £10 in trading interactions. In other words, the function "£10
note" needs to be collectively imposed on a piece of paper because it cannot perform
this function by virtue of its physical properties alone (e.g. its size or weight). This
definition of social facts implies that social facts contain symbolic elements and thus,
according to Searle, require at least some form of primitive language to come into exis-
tence. Like the example of money, ownership of a thing can be understood as a social
fact or social institution which gives owners a set of rights and duties that define what
can and cannot be done with their property (Kalish & Anderson, 2011). About 100 years

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

earlier, Jeremy Bentham advanced a similar idea when he claimed that ownership is a
"mere conception of the mind" (Bentham, 1894, p. 112), that would not exist without
the protection of the law.
Another way of characterizing the social institution of ownership is to describe it as
a triadic relationship between one person, another person and a (tangible or intangible)
thing which is mediated by different rights and duties (Christman, 1994). Even though
scholars differ in what they regard as ownership rights (e.g., Honoré, 1961; Carter,
1989), there seems to be some consensus that the basic ownership rights include, for
example, the right to exclusively use one’s property, the right to exclude others from
using one’s property, and the right to transfer one’s ownership rights to others (Snare,
1972). While this defines what ownership is, philosophers usually disagree on how to
justify ownership (and mostly commonly private property): whether to derive it for ex-
ample from principles like the investment of labour (e.g. John Locke), first occupancy
(e.g. Immanuel Kant), or personality (e.g. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), to name
the most prominent principles (see e.g., Carter, 1989, for overview and discussion of
the different principles).
Yet, in defining ownership as a social institution a very rich concept of ownership
is employed: ownership becomes dependent on language, on a shared belief system,
and on a complex network of different rights and duties. While this may be an accurate
description of what we understand as ownership in a modern world of highly differ-
entiated societies and intricate property law, it reveals very little about the origins of
ownership or about the cognitive requirements necessary for developing a concept of
ownership. How do humans acquire their concept of ownership? Do they possess an
evolved predisposition for forming an ownership concept, that is possibly shared with
other animals? Or do they acquire this concept during development, maybe making
use of more general cognitive processes? It appears highly implausible that human
children are born with an ownership concept that is as rich as proponents of the social
institution account suggest. Certain skills that would be necessary for such an own-
ership concept are only developed during the second year of life such as the ability to

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

form shared intentions with others or the acquisition of language (e.g., Tomasello, 2005;
Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007).

1.2.2 Evolutionary accounts of ownership concepts

Scholars who favour evolutionary accounts of ownership usually apply a more con-
strained definition of ownership than proponents of the social institution account. Jef-
frey Stake (2004) and Herbert Gintis (2007) define ownership as having exclusive ac-
cess to something and receiving the benefits from this privileged access. According to
Stake, "Property is more than a social invention; it is set of feelings built into our brains
to solve survival problems confronting our ancestors." (Stake, 2004, p. 1772) He argues
for an evolved "property instinct" that equips humans with a natural feeling that one
person may transfer things to another person and a natural inclination for what to do
with property. He further suggests that humans and animals share an innate strategy
for first possession, resulting, for example, in a first possession advantage when de-
fending resources such as territories or the ability to recognize first possession of one’s
own or other’s things. Similarly, Gintis (2007) develops a game theory model to argue
that the endowment effect - a bias to place more value on objects in one’s possession
as compared to objects one does not yet possess - could serve as a starting point for
the evolution of private property. He concludes that "Humans share with many other
species a predisposition to recognize private property." (Gintis, 2007, p. 15).
Both authors thus regard ownership concepts as an evolved adaptation of the hu-
man mind, yet in doing so, they face many of the criticisms that proponents of the-
ories of cognitive adaptations (often synonymous with Evolutionary Psychology) en-
counter. To name some of the most prominent points of criticism: (1) the difficulty to
distinguish between adaptations and non-adaptive side-products, and the danger of
telling just-so-stories (Gould & Lewontin, 1979), (2) the problem of reverse engineer-
ing, i.e. to infer design features of the mind by studying the problems it evolved to
solve (Buller, 2005), and (3) the difficulty in showing sufficient methodological rigour
to be able to conclusively demonstrate that mental adaptations evolved due to natu-

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

ral selection (Richardson, 2007). Furthermore, Gintis’ claim that humans evolved a
predisposition for private property seems completely unwarranted given that private
property is just one of the many possible forms of organizing ownership of things (for
example, consider common or collective property). Finally, both authors fail to distin-
guish between "possession" and "ownership". While "possession" presupposes physical
proximity between possessors and their things, "ownership" holds even in the owner’s
absence. Being able to recognize and respect ownership thus has to involve more so-
phisticated cognitive processes than recognizing and respecting possessions, such as
being able to track relationships between absent entities (i.e. owners and their things).
Kummer (1991) uses the distinction between ownership and possession to describe
a stage-like evolution of possessive and ownership behaviour from animals to humans.
According to Kummer, possessive behaviour evolved from a struggle to control re-
sources, which animals either solve through physical power, dominance, or in some
cases through respect for first possession. Yet, only humans "reinterpret the phyloge-
netically ancient convention of settling in favour of the prior owner in terms of morality
and law." (Kummer, 1991, p. 79). Recently, Brosnan (2011) has reached a similar con-
clusion regarding possessive behaviour in non-human primates finding that they show
a "possession-centered concept of property". Both authors used comparative evidence
to explore the evolution of ownership-related behaviours without postulating specific
cognitive adaptations. However, this account remains rather vague when it comes to
specifying how humans acquire their ownership concepts.

1.2.3 Cognitive mechanisms

Since most of the aforementioned accounts on their own do not provide a sufficient
framework for exploring the evolution and development of ownership concepts, I will
now attempt a synthesis of the different views. The main purpose will be to specify the
cognitive mechanisms that are necessary for acquiring a concept of ownership. Note,
that I do not claim that these mechanisms are evolved adaptations. I side with the scep-
tical critics of Evolutionary Psychology in recognizing the difficulties in proving that

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

certain cognitive mechanisms evolved due to natural selection. Yet, I also believe that
remaining silent on whether these mechanisms are adaptations, exaptations, or prod-
ucts of more general-purpose mechanisms does not pose a problem for this work. Fi-
nally, following the lead of Kummer (1991) and Brosnan (2011), I would like to highlight
the necessity to make a distinction between possession and ownership, especially, when
evaluating ownership-related behaviours in animals and human children. For reasons
of clarity I will primarily use the term "ownership" in the following paragraphs, but will
differentiate more clearly between "ownership" or "possession" when discussing empir-
ical findings later on. Using the aforementioned accounts of ownership as a guideline,
I propose that the following four mechanisms are necessary for having a concept of
ownership:
(1) The ability to form attachment to things: This is usually expressed by the fact that
agents are reluctant to part with their things and sometimes are even willing to endure
costs to defend/keep them. If there is an asymmetry in how agents value their things
and things they do not own, they will have (a) a motivation to acquire objects (since
their value increases once they are owned) and (b) they will behave differently towards
the objects in the environment depending on whether they are owned by the agent or
not.
(2) The ability to recognize ownership: This ability allows agents to distinguish between
things that are (a) owned vs. un-owned and (b) owned by the agent vs. owned by oth-
ers. Being able to draw this distinction will have consequences for how agents interact
with particular things in their environment (e.g. whether they can acquire them freely
or whether they must seek permission to use them). Recognition of ownership can be
achieved easily as long as agents are in physical possession of their things, but becomes
more difficult in the owners’ absence or in the case of intangible things like ideas.
(3) The ability to respect ownership: This ability highlights the fact that ownership
can only exist if others respect an owner’s claim over his property. Importantly, this
respect must originate solely from the fact that an agent owns a thing and ought not
be confounded with other factors such as physical power, dominance, age, gender, etc..

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

Similarly to (2), respect for ownership will be established more easily if other agents
are in physical possession of their things and will become more challenging in agents’
absence.
(4) The ability to understand the social norms regulating ownership: Ownership rules
may vary depending on (a) a particular community, (b) the type of thing (e.g. tangible
vs. intangible things), and (c) the owner (e.g. children may be allowed to own toys but
not cars). Often these rules will be normative rules, meaning that (a) their violation
will often lead to adverse consequences and (b) they will be enforced by third parties
on behalf of the owner.
Do humans share any of these abilities - even if only rudimentary - with other ani-
mals? How do these abilities develop in humans? These are questions that I will explore
in the following paragraphs.

1.3 Ownership Concepts in Animals?

There are a number of things in animals’ environments such as territories, nests, mates,
or food, regarding which animals can show ownership-related behaviours. However,
given the vast literature on animal behaviour, I will primarily focus on examples that
have been previously discussed in the context of ownership concepts in animals. My
review of ownership concepts in animals will follow the four cognitive mechanisms
that I have outlined above.

1.3.1 Attachment to things

Attachment to things is often expressed by the reluctance to part with one’s things or
the willingness to spend energy and effort to defend one’s things against transgressors.

Territory

From ants to chimpanzees, many animals occupy territories that they defend against
con-specifics trying to intrude. For example, groups of male chimpanzees regularly
patrol the boarders of their territory and sometimes have lethal encounters with trans-

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

gressors from neighbouring territories (Mitani, Watts, & Muller, 2002). Territories can
be best characterized as possessions as animals are usually in very close physical prox-
imity to their territories. Studies investigating territorial conflicts in species such as
butterflies and birds have revealed that prior residents1 often have an advantage and
are highly likely to defeat intruders (e.g. Davies, 1978; Krebs, 1982). Recently, however,
it has been proposed that factors other than residency may play a role in territorial con-
flicts: for example, residents tend to be intrinsically more aggressive than non-residents
(e.g. Kemp & Wiklund, 2004). Thus, while territorial defence behaviour can be used
as a marker for attachment to possessions, residency alone is probably not sufficient in
explaining this behaviour.

Tools

Next, I will turn to tool-using species and discuss whether tool using animals become
attached to their tools. Many species like dolphins, octopi, birds, and non-human pri-
mates use tools in the wild or can be trained to use them in captivity (Emery & Clayton,
2009; Seed & Byrne, 2010). New Caledonian crows use twigs and stepped-cut pandanus
leaves to extract insects from tree holes (Hunt, Kernan, & Mitchell, 1996). Chimpanzees
in the wild are probably among the most prolific tool-users, having "tool kits" that can
consist of up to 20 types of tools, such as twigs for termite fishing or stones that are used
as hammers and anvils to crack open nuts (McGrew, 2010). Furthermore, non-human
great apes in laboratory experiments are able to hold on to tools for up to 24 hours if
they can later be used to extract a food reward (Mulcahy & Call, 2006). However, when
a tool is no longer anticipated to be useful, animals will usually discard it and there is
no evidence to date that animals will show a lasting attachment to a particular tool.

Food

Food usually represents one of the most valuable resource in an animal’s environment.
For the most part, possession of food is temporary, as most food items are consumed
1
In the animal literature these effects are sometimes labelled "prior ownership" effects, yet given the
definition of ownership that I have laid out above, I will use the term "residency" to avoid confusion.

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

immediately. Caching-species form the exception, as they will store food and recover
it days or even months later. For example, in autumn, Clark’s nutcrackers will store up
to 100,000 pine seeds in up to 8000 different locations for retrieval during the winter
months (see, Brodin, 2005, for an overview) and often go to some length to protect their
caches from their competitors (Dally, Emery, & Clayton, 2006).
Non-human primates do not cache food, yet, they can barter their foodF posses-
sions (but also non-food possessions) with a human experimenter for better alterna-
tives (Lefebvre & Hewitt, 1986; Hyatt & Hopkins, 1998). Recently, researchers have be-
gun to investigate whether non-human primates will show a similar possession-related
bias in their trading behaviour, namely "the endowment effect" that humans typically
show (Brosnan et al., 2007; Lakshminaryanan, Chen, & Santos, 2008). The endowment
effect is a well documented bias in human decision making which describes the find-
ing that people often value things that they possess more than things they do not yet
possess (Thaler, 1980; Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1990). Capuchin monkeys and
chimpanzees show the effect for food items, i.e. they are reluctant to trade food in
their possession for items of equivalent value even when controlling for trading costs
(Brosnan et al., 2007; Lakshminaryanan et al., 2008). Interestingly, chimpanzees do not
prefer to keep non-food items (i.e. toys) that they were endowed with, indicating that
endowment effects in non-human primates may be limited to food endowment. An-
imals thus appear to value food items and to go to some length to protect their food
resources, but it is questionable whether they value non-food items to the same extent.
I will explore this issue further in Chapter 2, where I will present an empirical study
looking at endowment effects in all four great ape species.

1.3.2 Recognizing ownership

Recognizing whether things are owned and who they are owned by is another essen-
tial component of a concept of ownership. It has been suggested that cues such as "first
come, first possess" could be used for recognizing ownership (Stake, 2004), but whether
animals actually use these cues is often difficult to assess. To date, there is only one

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

study, that tried to assess whether animals will form associations between individuals
and their possessions. Itakura (1992) regularly fed "Ai", a chimpanzee that had been
trained to use lexigrams on a touch screen, and two other apes from "their" feeding
bowls. In a series of tests, Ai showed aggressive behaviour when "her" bowl was used
to feed another individual, preferred to take food from her own bowl, and was able
to accurately match pictures of the different bowls to pictures of the three individuals
(including herself). These findings may indicate that chimpanzees may be able to form
possession-like associations between individuals and objects and to recall them in the
individual’s absence (i.e. when presented with an image of the individual). However,
Ai’s behaviour could have also been caused by an expectation to receive food whenever
"her" bowl was presented, which would have led to negative reactions if another indi-
vidual received food instead and a preference for "her" bowl when given a choice. In
addition, it is unclear whether Ai’s matching of bowls to individuals really expresses
an understanding of possessions or whether it simply demonstrates the fact that she
formed an association between different entities (e.g. individuals and objects).
So far there is no convincing evidence that animals can recognize ownership, partic-
ularly, in an owner’s absence. Yet, in the past, recognition of ownership has often been
studied indirectly by measuring whether animals will respect possessions even if the
possessor is a subordinate. I will discuss the findings in the following paragraph.

1.3.3 Respecting ownership

Territorial contests

Territorial contests in animals have been one of the prime areas for studying respect for
possessions. Maynard Smith and Parker (1976) demonstrated that territorial contests
can be modelled as an asymmetric hawk-dove game, in which residents and intruders
have the choice between playing "hawk" (i.e. show aggressive behaviour until seriously
injured or opponent retreats) and "dove" (i.e. retreat if opponent shows aggressive be-
haviour). If the cost of losing a fight is higher than the value of the territory, then the
"Bourgeois" strategy, in which the resident plays hawk and the intruder plays dove,

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

will spread in a population. This strategy will spread because it is an Evolutionary

Stable Strategy (ESS), i.e. a strategy that if most members of the population adopt it,
cannot be invaded by a mutant strategy (Maynard Smith & Price, 1973)2 . Respect for
prior residency can thus be used as an arbitrary cue to settle conflicts and, in fact, em-
pirical studies show that in many animal species, residents regularly defeat intruders
(see, Kokko, López-Sepulcre, & Morrell, 2006, for an overview). For example, Davies
(1978) demonstrated in a seminal study that male speckled wood butterflies that oc-
cupy a sunspot will win a fight with intruders (even if the intruder was resident in the
same spot seconds earlier).
It is questionable, however, whether these empirical findings that rely on observing
fights between residents and non-residents really reflect a respect for prior residency
(or even respect for possession). In fact, if residency was indeed a convention that both
opponents respected, no observable fights would occur. If one still observed fights,
than the reasons would not be related to prior residency at all, but would probably be
caused by non-residents expecting the resident to be absent or by probing its fighting
ability (Grafen, 1987). Kokko et al. (2006) further point out that the outcome of a fight
alone does not allow for any conclusions regarding an animal’s intentions and motiva-
tions. For example, it has been observed that fighting ability and other motivational
factors (and not just prior residency) can determine outcomes in territorial contests
(Bergman, Olofsson, & Wiklund, 2010). Finally, going back to the hawk-dove model,
there are circumstances (e.g. if animals can only reproduce when they have a territory)
under which it may pay off for intruders as well as for residents to play a hawk-strategy,
making respect for prior residency no longer an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (Grafen,
1987). Overall, these empirical and theoretical findings suggest that the prior residency
effect does not warrant the conclusion that animals respect possession or that they have
conventions regarding the possession of territory.
2
Since the roles of "resident" and "intruder" are arbitrary, an anti-bourgeois strategy, i.e. residents
always play dove and intruders always play hawk, is also an ESS, but is argued to have less biological
plausibility.

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

Mates and Food Possession

Few studies have directly investigated respect for possessions in animals and all of these
studies have been conducted with non-human primates. Kummer, Götz, and Angst
(1974) investigated respect of "possession" of females in baboons. They found that once
a rival had watched another male from his troop interact with a female, possession of
the female was never challenged irrespective of the dominance rank of the two males.
Yet, when two males of different troops interacted, dominant rivals sometimes chal-
lenged possession of the female. Female preferences for a mating partner only mattered
in the case of low ranking males, who did not challenge higher ranking males for which
females had shown a preference (Bachmann & Kummer, 1980).
In addition, a number of studies have looked at respect for possession of food ob-
jects. When objects were introduced into a group of capuchin monkeys, food objects
elicited more competition than non-food objects (Thierry, Wunderlich, & Gueth, 1989).
Interestingly, object transfer was not directly related to dominance rank, possibly be-
cause most of the transfers occurred between sub-adults. In a more direct test of respect
for possession Sigg and Falett (1985) allowed the lower ranking of two baboons to feed
from a food can for a few minutes before a rival was given access. Dominant individu-
als never took over the food can in male-male pairs, occasionally in male-female pairs,
and on about half of the occasions in female-female pairs. When investigating these
findings further Kummer and Cords (1991) found that respect for possession (in fe-
male groups, male-male dyads, and female-female dyads) was crucially dependent on
the object being portable. If, however, feeding objects were fixed to the cage wall, they
were often monopolized by the dominant individual. This indicates that respect for
possession crucially depends on the sub-ordinate’s ability to escape with their objects
and can thus only be called "indirect" respect for possession.
While there is some evidence that male baboons from the same troop respect the
possession of females irrespective of rank order, respect for possession of food items
only seems to be indirect. Given the weak evidence for respect for possession in the
owner’s presence, it seems highly unlikely that animals will show any respect for pos-

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session in the owner’s absence (i.e. true respect of ownership).

1.3.4 Social norms

Do animals have social norms regarding the use of possessions? Stake (2004) suggested
that first possession may be one of the ownership rules that animals employ, but - as
discussed above - evidence for use of this rule is sparse. More importantly, it is unclear
whether this rule truly possesses all the characteristics of a collective social rule (i.e. de-
pends on a shared social convention) or represents merely a behavioural regularity (i.e.
behaviour that is contingent on non-conventional factors such as certain environmental
cues; von Rudolf Rohr, Burkart, & van Schaik, 2011). In fact, it has been suggested that
third party punishment, i.e. a third, uninvolved party intervening on behalf of another
party, is a crucial component for sustaining social norms (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004).
Direct punishment (i.e. second party punishment) of transgressions has been found
in a number of animal species. For example, chimpanzees will collapse a table with
their food on it if another individual took that food (Jensen, Call, & Tomasello, 2007), or
reef fish will chase away cleaner fish that ate the fish’s mucus instead of ectoparasites
(Bshary & Grutter, 2005). Yet, to date, there is no empirical evidence for the presence of
third party punishment in animals (Jensen, 2010). Even though von Rudolf Rohr et al.
(2011) recently suggested that chimpanzees may possess proto-social norms regarding
tolerance towards infants, compelling evidence to support this claim is still missing.
This strongly indicates that animal societies do not possess universal social norms and
consequently cannot possess any particular social norms regarding ownership.

1.3.5 Summary

The evidence to date suggests that animals only show very rudimentary precursors of
ownership-related behaviours. Most, if not all, ownership-related behaviour is in fact
possession-related behaviour, i.e. is crucially dependent on an animal being in physical
proximity to a thing. While animals show attachment to things such as territories, food,
and mates, evidence for recognizing possession and respecting other’s possessions irre-

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CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

spective of factors such as dominance rank or competitive advantages is sparse. Apart

from one rare example of respect for possession of females in baboons, most respect
for possession seems to derive from the fact that possessors manage to avoid domi-
nant rivals (e.g. by carrying possession away). Finally, universal social rules regarding
ownership are absent from animal societies. While attachment to things could form
a biological basis for ownership-related behaviours in humans, an ownership concept
that encompasses recognition and respect of ownership as well as a complex web of
social rules is probably the unique product of a human socio-cultural environment.

1.4 Development of Ownership Concepts

Having argued that it is implausible that humans share a predisposition to (rich) own-
ership concepts with other animals, I will now turn to developmental evidence and
explore how children develop an understanding of ownership. I will again use the four
cognitive mechanisms that I proposed early as guideline in discussing the developmen-
tal evidence.

1.4.1 Attachment to things

Early possessive behaviour

Newborn babies quickly try to grasp things or to latch onto them and it has been sug-
gested that this may be evidence for an innate inclination to possess objects (Rochat,
2009, 2011). Moreover, during their first year of life more than 50% of infants in West-
ern countries develop an attachment to so-called "transitional" objects like blankets or
cuddly animals (Winnicott, 1953; Litt, 1986), which are often treasured all the way into
adulthood. Even though infants form strong emotional attachment to objects, young
infants rarely object if another infant touches their toys (Hay, Nash, & Pedersen, 1983).
Starting in their second year of life, however, infants become increasingly involved in
conflicts over possessions and frequently defend their possessions against take over at-
tempts by others (Hay & Ross, 1982; Hay, Hurst, Waters, & Chadwick, 2011). Infants
thus appear to have the propensity to readily form attachment to things in their envi-

15
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

ronment, but do not begin to actively defend their possessions until about two years of
age.

Early sharing behaviour

Infants’ and young children’s sharing behaviour could also be used as a marker for
their attachment to possessions. For example, preschoolers at lunch time will often only
share food if others have actively requested sharing (Birch & Billman, 1986). Generally,
young children have a tendency to maximize self-gain and it is not until they are five
years and older that they begin to share resources equally (e.g. Gummerum, Hanoch,
Keller, Parsons, & Hummel, 2010; Blake & Rand, 2010). However, young children’s
sharing behaviour is sensitive to differences in ownership: for example, sharing of a toy
was found to increase in four-year-olds when children were told that the toy belonged to
the class as compared to the child or no-one (Eisenberg-Berg, Haake, Hand, & Sadalla,
1979). Young children thus appear to be reluctant to spontaneously give their things to
others and it is only after a period of socialization - and possibly active teaching - that
they begin to share. Yet, it is somewhat unclear whether young children’s reluctance to
share is caused by a strong attachment to possessions or just a general ego-centric bias.

Endowment effects

I will now revisit the previously discussed endowment effect as a measure of how pos-
session impacts on the valuation of objects (Thaler, 1980; Kahneman et al., 1990). Stud-
ies have found that children from five years of age are more likely to keep a toy after
they have been endowed with it than to exchange it for an equally attractive, alternative
toy (Harbaugh, Krause, & Vesterlund, 2001). Unfortunately, however, the endowment
effect has not been studied in younger children, despite abundant evidence for its pres-
ence in adults (e.g., Knetsch, 1989; Hoorens, Remmers, & van de Riet, 1999; Carmon
& Ariely, 2000). It is thus remains unclear whether the endowment effect arises from
a predisposition to overvalue possessions or whether it is, in fact, the result of other
factors such as culturally elicited self-concepts (Maddux et al., 2010) or market expo-

16
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

sure (Apicella, Azevedo, Christakis, & Fowler, under review). I will return to this issue
in Chapter 3, where I investigated endowment effects in three- and four-year-old chil-
dren.

1.4.2 Recognizing ownership

Ownership representations

To date, there is little research on how pre-verbal infants come to recognize ownership.
According to Blake and Harris (2011), pre-verbal infants begin to develop early own-
ership representations by forming visual associations between people and objects, and
could identify which associations to track by using positive reinforcement or posses-
sors’ intentional actions towards their objects. Since this process requires the simulta-
neous presence of both the owner and the object, infants’ ownership representation at
this point in the development is conceivably a possession-centred one.
During their second year of life, however, infants acquire language and quickly be-
gin to use possessive pronouns like "mine" and "yours" (Tomasello, 1998; Hay, 2006).
In fact, between 18 and 24 months infants become able to identify owners of familiar
objects, such as their mother’s toothbrush or their own shoes (Fasig, 2000; Rodgon &
Rashman, 1976). The acquisition of language marks an important point in the devel-
opment of ownership representations as it now allows infants to form representations
with respect to absent entities. Blake and Harris (2011) found that 30-month-olds (but
not 24-month-olds) can learn ownership relations between out of view toys and absent
people and use this information to retrieve the correct toy later on. According to the au-
thors, this finding suggests that infants form an object-centred representation of owner-
ship (i.e. ownership is an attribute to distinguish objects) and not a person-centred one
(i.e. owned entities are attributed to persons), yet, more evidence is needed to support
this claim.

17
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

Rules of thumb

Starting at two-years of age, young children cannot only represent ownership relation-
ships between absent entities, they also begin to use some basic rules of thumb to iden-
tify owners of unfamiliar objects. For example, when children are presented with short
cartoon stories of two characters playing with a toy, they usually attribute ownership to
the person who possessed the object first (Friedman & Neary, 2008). Three-year-olds
will apply more complex rules to infer ownership such as ascribing ownership to a per-
son who grants or denies permission to use an object (Neary, Friedman, & Burnstein,
2009). Moreover, when having to decide whether objects are owned or not, three-year-
olds often consider natural kinds as unowned and artefacts as owned, even though
this effect is more pronounced in older children (Neary, van Vondervoort, & Friedman,
2012). Finally, while even young children demonstrate an early competence in under-
standing and tracking ownership of tangible objects, children do not become sensitive
to the ownership of ideas until age five (Olson & Shaw, 2011).
Starting with the onset of language and the ability to represent ownership relation-
ships between absent entities, children develop an understanding of ownership that
increases in complexity throughout the preschool years. Notably, some rules of thumb
such as the first possession rule seem to be used by children and adults alike to infer
ownership of objects (Friedman, 2008; Friedman & Neary, 2009). In addition, adults
will infer ownership relationships based on who was necessary for acquiring an object
(Friedman, 2010). While this indicates that adults’ ownership inferences may be more
nuanced than children’s, it has recently been suggested that one of the underlying pro-
cesses by means of which adults and children infer ownership relationships may be the
reconstruction of an object’s history (e.g. "Who had it first?" "Who acquired it?" "Who
gave it to whom?"; Friedman, Neary, Defeyter, & Malcolm, 2011).

1.4.3 Respecting ownership

Respect for ownership has rarely been directly studied in infants and children. How-
ever, ownership conflict behaviour in children is a valuable starting point for studying

18
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

respect for possession and ownership, particularly, as it offers a parallel to animals’

behaviour in territorial conflicts that was discussed earlier. In addition, children’s un-
derstanding of ownership rights and, especially, their understanding of legitimate (e.g.
buying) and illegitimate (e.g. stealing) ways of acquiring property offers a further av-
enue for studying children’s understanding of respect of ownership.

Object Conflicts

In this section I will first discuss conflicts concerning the possession of objects (i.e. when
objects are under children’s direct physical control, but not necessarily owned by them)
and then proceed to presenting evidence regarding ownership of objects (i.e. when
objects are owned by children, but not necessarily in their possession).
About 75% of young children’s conflicts with peers revolve around the possession
of objects (Hay & Ross, 1982; Shantz, 1987). In six-month-old infants possessors usu-
ally keep toys when another infant is trying to take it, though these conflicts are mostly
resolved without using force or fussing out (Hay et al., 1983). Similarly, Ramsey (1987)
observed in three- to four-year-olds in daycares, that in conflicts over possession of toys,
defenders won in about 60% of cases. This evidence suggests that prior possession
presents an advantage in conflicts over objects; yet, other factors may play a role in
ownership conflicts, too. For example, conflicts in one- and two-year-olds occur more
frequently when toys are plentiful than when they are scarce (Caplan, Vespo, Pedersen,
& Hay, 1991) and 21-month-olds often view a toy as more attractive after another child
has named or touched it (Hay & Ross, 1982). It is thus conceivable that conflicts con-
cerning the possession of objects are also driven by social motives such as establishing
social relationships and exerting social influence.
When focusing on conflicts regarding the ownership of objects, studies have found
that two-, four-, and six-year-olds usually respect ownership of objects and that owners
retain their object irrespective of who is currently possessing it (Ross, 1996; Ross et al.,
1996; Ross, Conant, & Vickar, 2011). Similarly, if preschoolers are told that they own
a particular toy (as compared to the whole kindergarten group owning the toy), they

19
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

are more likely to defend it and to retain possession of it during take-over attempts
by peers (Eisenberg-Berg, Haake, & Bartlett, 1981). In addition, conflicts occur more
frequently when ownership of objects is not established (Conant, 1991, referred to in:
Ross et al., 2011), indicating that ownership plays an important regulatory function in
conflicts regarding objects. By two years of age, children thus begin to respect others’
ownership of objects, yet, the high frequency of ownership conflicts in that age group
suggests that children are still in the process of consolidating their respect for other’s
ownership.
It is possible that peers and siblings play an important role in how young children
learn respect for ownership. Numerous studies have found that parents are often in-
consistent in enforcing respect of ownership and in endorsing ownership rights (Ross,
1996; Ross et al., 1996). For example, when one of their children possess an object the
other child owns, parents support owners and possessors equally often. Moreover, chil-
dren appear to respect and reinforce ownership more often than their parents. In fact,
in object conflicts with peers, parents will often ask their own child to share toys and
reinforce the rights of other children (Ross, Tesla, Kenyon, & Lollis, 1990). Parents thus
do not always enforce ownership rights, but stress sharing and pro-social behaviour
equally often.

Ownership rights

Children’s respect of possession and ownership has been primarily studied in every-
day life situations using observational methods, yet, a few recent studies have started
to explore whether children will understand respect for ownership on a more abstract,
conceptual level, too. In these studies, children usually have to make ownership judge-
ments regarding stories of third parties.
Some early findings indicated that children before the age of ten did not distinguish
between stealing and borrowing when evaluating how bad a certain act is (Hook, 1993).
However, recent evidence suggests that four-year-olds (but not younger children) start
to distinguish between legitimate transfers of ownership such as gift giving and illegiti-

20
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

mate transfers of ownership such as stealing (Blake & Harris, 2009). Similarly, Kim and
Kalish (2009) found that four- to five-year-olds prioritize the rights of owners over the
rights of finders or borrowers, but only older children also understand the difference
between owning and selling an object. Taken together, these findings indicate that by
four years of age, children begin to develop a more abstract concept of ownership, by
e.g. recognizing an owners rights to their property and by prioritizing ownership over
current possession (in cases such as stealing).
Respect for ownership and ownership rights thus does not only play an important
role in young children’s social interactions but also when judging the interaction of
third parties. Evidence so far, however, indicates that respect for ownership probably
first emerges in social interactions, starting at two years of age, and is later, at around
four years of age, applied to judging interactions among third parties. It is possible that
three- and four-year-olds’ improving ability to take others’ perspectives enables them
to make better third party ownership judgements (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001).

1.4.4 Social Norms

The final, and crucial aspect for developing a concept of ownership is the ability to
recognize social rules, especially, rules regarding ownership of property and to adjust
behaviour accordingly. Ownership rules are usually normative rules, that is they define
the rights and duties of owners as well as non-owners (Snare, 1972). In fact, it has
recently been suggested that ownership presents one of the contexts in which children
first come to appreciate the conventional nature of social rules - possibly because even
young children can exercise some control over objects in their environment (e.g. trading
things, giving things away, etc.; Kalish, 2005; Kalish & Anderson, 2011). So when do
children first begin to understand the conventional nature of social rules?
Interview-based studies have revealed that children aged six to eleven years of age
distinguish between social rules regarding harm (e.g. one child pushing another child
off a bicycle and hurting him/herself) and non-social aspects of harm (e.g. a child
falling off the bicycle and hurting him/herself), but that only older children appreciate

21
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

that social rules are relative to a particular context (Tisak & Turiel, 1984). In addition,
children between three and five years of age understand that violations of physical laws
(e.g. a boy wanting to turn into a bird and fly) are different from violations of social
laws (e.g. a boy wanting to sleep in the day and staying awake in the night; Kalish,
1998). However, only four- to five-year-olds appreciate that conformity to social rules,
but not to physical laws, is dependent on mental states.
Observational studies in nurseries and children’s homes, however, have demon-
strated that children are sensitive to transgressions of social rules in everyday inter-
actions much earlier than that. Infants as young as 20 months react to moral transgres-
sions (i.e. transgression of principles of right and wrong regarding other’s welfare and
rights), but it is not until 30 months and later, that children begin to react to conven-
tional transgressions (i.e. transgression of arbitrary rules that regulate social interac-
tions; Smetana, 1984). Interestingly, moral transgressions are more likely to occur in
interactions with peers while conventional transgressions are more likely to occur in
interaction with caretakers (Smetana, 1989).
A set of recent studies measured two- and three-year-olds’ spontaneous responses
to conventional violations using interactive scenarios in the lab. These studies found
that two-year-olds will react to violations of rules of conventional games as well as
joint pretence games, but that these responses will be more pronounced and more
context-specific in three-year-olds (Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2008; Rakoczy,
2008; Wyman, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2009). In addition, three-year-olds will protest
against violations of different speech acts (Rakoczy, Brosche, Warneken, & Tomasello,
2009). Importantly, Rossano, Rakoczy, and Tomasello (2011) investigated how two-
and three-year-olds will react to a puppet taking possession of others’ property or to
throwing it away. Children protested against both violations, yet only three-year-olds
protested when a third party’s property was at stake.
During their second year of life children thus begin to develop an awareness of the
different rules that regulate their social life. However, children do not come to under-
stand the conventional nature of these rules, i.e. that they also apply to third parties,

22
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

until three years of age and possibly later.

1.4.5 Summary

The developmental evidence suggests that ownership of objects plays an important role
early on in children’s lives. Infants quickly develop an attachment to objects and exhibit
self-serving biases in their sharing behaviour until they are school-aged. With the ac-
quisition of language children begin to map owners to objects and to use simple rules
of thumb to infer ownership, though these heuristics become more sophisticated with
age. Prior possession may give an advantage to the possessor in disputes, however,
many early conflicts seem to be caused by social motives and less so by true disputes
regarding possessions. However, when ownership is established, owners do have an
advantage over non-owners in conflicts. Finally, pre-school children begin to develop
an understanding of the normative nature of social rules such as ownership. Taken
together these findings indicate that ownership concepts begin to develop during the
second year of life with the acquisition of language, but are primarily formed during
the preschool years.
The developmental boost in ownership understanding between two and three years
of age also suggests that language and in particular the ability to refer to relationships
between absent entities (i.e. absent owners and their property) plays a crucial role in
developing ownership concepts. Animals seem to share with young humans the ten-
dency to form attachment to things and to defend things in their possession. However,
in the absence of language animals will be more constrained to the here and now and
their conception of ownership will thus probably remain centred around possessions
(i.e. the simultaneous presence of owners and their objects). Furthermore, at around
the same time that children come to recognize and respect ownership, they also show
an emerging understanding of the conventional nature of social rules, an ability that
is entirely absent in animals. It thus appears that despite a shared biological predis-
position with other animals to form attachment to things in their environment, human
children seem equipped with a unique cognitive apparatus that allows them to acquire

23
CHAPTER 1. ORIGINS OF OWNERSHIP CONCEPTS

ownership concepts and to navigate the complexities of the social reality that is sur-
rounding them.

1.5 This Dissertation

The focus of this dissertation is to investigate the biological and developmental origins
of ownership concepts. I will present a series of experiments with great apes, young
children and adults trying to illuminate different aspects of ownership concepts. In
Chapter 2, I will explore a possession-related bias in decision making - the endowment
effect - in great apes, focusing on the question whether great apes show this across a
range of different commodities as humans typically do. Chapter 3 will then explore the
developmental origins of the endowment effect, using a methodology that is similar to
the one used with great apes to allow for a better comparison between the two sets of
experiments. In Chapters 4 to 6, I will focus my investigation on the development of
ownership concepts in humans, and, in particular, on children’s and adults’ use of the
creative labour principle when making ownership judgements. Specifically, in Chap-
ter 4, I will present evidence that children and adults transfer ownership to someone
after s/he has invested effort into creating something new. Chapter 5 will demonstrate
that children and adults apply the same rule when judging interactions between third
parties. Finally, in Chapter 6, I will explore children’s understanding of the norma-
tive aspects of ownership rules focusing on their understanding of ownership rights in
the context of newly created artwork. The last chapter, Chapter 7, will summarize and
discuss my findings and provide an overview of questions that could be addressed in
future research.

24
Bibliography

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