Children hold owners responsible when property causes harm

Since ancient times, legal systems have held owners responsible for harm caused by their property. Across 4 experiments, we show that children aged 3–7 also hold owners responsible for such harm. Older children judge that owners should repair harm caused by property, and younger children may do this as well. Younger and older children judge that owners should apologize for harm, even when children do not believe the owners allowed the harm to occur. Children are also as likely to hold owners responsible for harm caused by property as for harm caused by the owners themselves. The present findings contribute to psychological accounts of ownership by showing that ownership not only confers rights to control property, but also responsibility for harm caused by property. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the attribution of responsibility, and challenge accounts claiming that directly causing harm, or allowing it to happen, is a prerequisite for responsibility. The findings provide support for an account claiming that property is an extension of its owner, and likewise reveal that responsibility for harm caused by property is an early developing aspect of the psychology of ownership. 2018 APA, all rights reserved

The Phenomenological Origins of Property

This thesis delineates the phenomenological basis of ownership and property. The phenomenological theory of property has three main elements: the minimal self, the relationship between the sense of agency and the sense of ownership, and the psychological phenomenon of associative self-anchoring. The well established neurocognitive concept of the minimal self encapsulates a person’s immediate self-consciousness, and the non-conceptual senses of agency and ownership are two integral constituents of this immediate sensory experience. Notably, this sense of self is typified by a motor intentionality (i.e., the minimal self is primed for goal-directed actions). The motor character of the minimal self primarily manifests itself in the construct of the body schema—a dynamic mental model of the body that functions as an instrument of directed action. A remarkable feature of the body schema is that it expands to incorporate extracorporeal objects that are objectively controlled by the person (e.g., grasping a pen or holding an umbrella). Moreover, this embodiment of extracorporeal objects is accompanied by the phenomenological feeling of ownership towards the embodied objects. In fact, I demonstrate with the aid of empirical evidence from cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology that the sense of ownership and the sense of agency are inextricably linked, and that the sense of agency modulates (engenders) the sense of ownership. In other words, the mere experience of agency over an object is capable of evoking the sense of ownership—the influence of the sense of agency in eliciting the sense of ownership is moderated by gestalt-like principles of priority, consistency, and exclusivity. In addendum, the non-conceptual sense of ownership is shaped and strengthened by the formation of implicit self-object associations—people psychologically associate themselves with their possessions. Altogether, the motor-intentional nature of the self, the inherent sensory experience of ownership, and the capacity to establish self-object psychological associations make the concept of personal property a natural correlate of mechanisms that lead to the development of self-perception and representation. The phenomenological theory also elucidates the psychological literature on ownership judgments and the vague concept of intellectual property. It is also emphasised that aspects of this property theory are analogous to Hegel’s theory of property. As a result, the phenomenological theory may have implications for Hegelian conceptions of property, and can aid them in determining legitimate property relations—these typically denote a close connection between property and personhood

Preschoolers’ reasoning about the “how”, “what” and “when” of ownership.

My dissertation includes three papers. Paper one investigates preschoolers’ appreciation of how people become owners. In two experiments, 70 3-to-5-year-olds were asked to explain why a character owns, likes, or uses certain objects. Four- and five-year-olds, but not three-year-olds, used past events of buying, giving and finding to explain ownership demonstrating an appreciation of how property is typically acquired. Four- and five-year-olds generated such explanations even though they never saw these past events happen. Thus, these findings also have implications for children’s ability to infer history in their explanations. Paper two examines children’s understanding of what ownership entitles owners to do with their property. In this study, 128 children aged 4 to 6 were asked what a person was allowed to do with an object that belonged to the person, belonged to no-one, or belonged to someone else. Children were allowed to provide as many responses as they wished. Their responses reflected an appreciation that ownership affects a wide range of object uses including harmless object use. The pattern of children’s responses also suggested that they view ownership as restricting non-owners from using property, rather than affecting use by entitling owners. Paper three investigates the influence of ownership on young children’s reasoning by examining when preschoolers use ownership to explain acceptability. In this study, 323 3- to 5-year-olds were asked to explain acceptable and unacceptable actions. In Experiments 1 and 2, ownership was not mentioned to children before they generated their explanations. In these experiments, older preschoolers but not younger preschoolers spontaneously referenced ownership more than alternative considerations in their explanations. In Experiment 3, ownership was mentioned to children before they generated their explanations. In this experiment, younger preschoolers frequently referenced ownership when explaining unacceptability, but not when explaining acceptability. Together these findings suggest that ownership is influential in preschoolers’ reasoning about the acceptability of using objects, but that the scope of its influence increases with age. My dissertation concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of my findings for children’s reasoning about ownership

Does Autism Affect Children’s Identification of Ownership and Defence of Ownership Rights?

open access articleThis study investigated how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) impacts children’s ability to identify ownership from linguistic cues (proper nouns vs. possessive pronouns) and their awareness of ownership rights. In comparison to typically developing (TD) children matched on receptive language (M age equivalents: 53–56 months), children with ASD were less accurate at tracking owner-object relationships based on possessive pronouns and were less accurate at identifying the property of third parties. We also found that children with ASD were less likely to defend their own and others’ ownership rights. We hypothesise that these results may be attributed to differences in representing the self and propose that ASD may be characterised by reduced concern for ownership and associated concepts

Autonomy and the Folk Concept of Valid Consent

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights

Inability and Obligation in Moral Judgment

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle

Autonomy and the folk concept of valid consent

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even when the consenter makes an irrational and inauthentic decision. Finally, Study 3 showed that the effect of autonomy on judgments of valid consent carries important downstream consequences for moral reasoning about the rights and obligations of third parties, even when the consented-to action is morally wrong. Overall, these findings suggest that laypeople embrace a normative, domain-general concept of valid consent that depends consistently on the possession of autonomous capacities, but not on the exercise of these capacities. Autonomous decisions and autonomous capacities thus play divergent roles in moral reasoning about consent interactions: while the former appears relevant for assessing the wrongfulness of consented-to acts, the latter plays a role in whether consent is regarded as authoritative and therefore as transforming moral rights

Bodily autonomy of young children: mothers’ perspectives of appropriate acceptance or rejection of affection for their toddler and preschool aged children

Young children’s understanding of autonomy related to their body and touch has received relatively little attention in the developmental sciences even though children's understanding of basic principles related to their identity start to take shape during this period. Addressing this gap in the literature could help inform efforts to develop a lifespan curriculum around consent, so that children learn about bodily autonomy and consent in a developmentally appropriate way. Informed by symbolic interactionism and feminist theory, this qualitative study incorporated both focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 21 mothers to examine their perspectives on bodily autonomy of young children ages 2 to 5. The study’s findings reflected mothers’ experiences, perspectives, beliefs, parenting philosophies and behaviors related to the following five themes: (1) Maternal Bodily Autonomy Socialization, (2) Connection Between Mothers’ and Children’s Socialization, (3) Children’s Bodily Autonomy Socialization, (4) Maternal Advocacy, and (5) Complexity of Violation. Ultimately, all of the mothers in the study were pro-bodily autonomy and acknowledged the importance of children being given choice; however, there was considerable diversity in the experiences that shaped their perspectives and the socialization strategies they used with their children, suggesting there is no one size fits all model for socializing children about bodily autonomy, affection, touch, and consent. This study provides an initial empirical basis for conceptualizing ways to support and develop young toddler and preschool aged children’s bodily autonomy and represents a starting point in helping parents, families, educators, children, and the public understand the importance of pro-bodily autonomy socialization in a world where this is not yet widely appreciated or recognized