title: Ownership reasoning in children across cultures.
abstract: To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socio-economic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three- and five-year-old children (N=176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the passing of false belief theory of mind.
authors: Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. Electronic address: psypr@emory.edu.
authors: Philippe
authors: P
authors: Rochat
authors: Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
authors: Erin
authors: E
authors: Robbins
authors: Department of Philosophy, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
authors: Claudia
authors: C
authors: Passos-Ferreira
authors: State University of Rio de Janeiro, Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
authors: Angela
authors: A
authors: Donato Oliva
authors: Departamento de Psicologia at Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil.
authors: Maria D G
authors: MD
authors: Dias
authors: Department of Psychology East China Normal University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors: Liping
authors: L
authors: Guo
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019545:Intuition; D008297:Male; D010067:Ownership; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012424:Rural Population; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D056345:Theory of Mind; D013850:Thinking; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population; D009514:Vanuatu
keywords: Children; Culture; Development; Ownership; Reasoning