Pascal Boyer persuasively proposes that ownership intuitions derive from a two-tiered process engaging cognitive systems which have independently evolved for competition over resources and, respectively, cooperation. Elegantly minimal and capable of explaining both run-of-the-mill and puzzling ideas about ownership, the model should also account for intuitions about things belonging to more than one actor – a recurrent feature documented by anthropologists across cultures.
Collaborative provisioning of resources which are impossible or costlier to pursue alone is a core feature of human cooperation. Communal sharing and collective action involve various forms of multi-person ownership of things occurring from hunter-gatherers to large-scale societies (Widlok, Reference Widlok2016). When several people collectively catch an animal, inhabit a dwelling, or tend to a fire, P-cues indicate a thing's relationships with two or more agents. Boyer argues that joint ownership produces intuitive representations of collectives as agents (e.g., nations, corporations, or lineage groups), but this only appears under special conditions, and without replacing ownership tags about individual agents.
If three people work cooperatively to produce a thing T, ownership psychology may produce a single P() label fusing all people in a single agent (“T-owners”), but also different P() labels for all agents. As children as young as 4 envision intermediary rights of members to group-owned things (Huh & Friedman, Reference Huh and Friedman2017), representations of collective ownership do not preclude thinking about individual ownership of a thing which also belongs to others. Arguably, separate entries are needed to calibrate the fair division of the benefits of cooperation (already present in preschoolers; Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevallier, Reference Baumard, Mascaro and Chevallier2012). If an individual deployed more effort, time, or skill than the others, we intuitively consider she owns more of the collective product, while matching contributions suggest equal co-ownerships.
The collapse of collectivized agriculture after the 1989 Romanian Revolution offers an interesting test of multiple ownership intuitions with or without joint agents. When villagers in Sateni divided the socialist farm assets, a dozen villagers received a newly built stable as compensation for outstanding (and equal) payments (Umbres, Reference Umbres2022). They chalk-marked walls into sections which family teams demolished and carried home the scavenged materials from their part. While peasants knew the use value of a standing building was much larger than of its components, none entertained the idea of joint ownership (or thought that others might entertain it). On reception day, all came to the site with their horse-drawn carts prepared for instant division and smoothly coordinated upon the intuitive solution of slicing up the collective asset into privately owned things.
Nonetheless, Sateni villagers often entertain representations of joint ownership as land, animals, or households are usually perceived as owned by families rather than individuals. Moreover, the family is by far the fundamental cooperative social entity in this “amoral familism” culture with deep distrust toward, and almost no expectations of cooperation between, unrelated villagers. Arguably, had a family or a group of people connected by kin ties received the building, they could have coordinated around a shared L() label associating the ownership of the whole asset to a cooperative coalition based on trial-and-tested mutual trust. Indeed, the Sateni stable was partitioned between families represented (and acting) as agentive co-owners of shares in a larger but not agentively co-owned entity.
Intuitions of partible ownership without joint agency also appear in dilemmas such as who owns a buried treasure discovered by a tenant on a landlord's property. Experiments (DeScioli & Karpoff, Reference DeScioli and Karpoff2015) show that various principles drive intuitions of property rights (often diverging from actual legal decisions) but also that people often don't have strong convictions one way or another. Respondents could thus have intuitions that both agents are owners yet choose the relatively stronger claim as required by experimenters (or legal demands). Moreover, a majority of children answer that first arrivers on an island and later arrivers own the island equally (Verkuyten, Sierksma, & Martinovic, Reference Verkuyten, Sierksma and Martinovic2015)
If two or more agents dispute a thing without a clear winner, the production of a P() tag could be deferred (no ownership intuitions until clear evidence of possession). A more likely alternative is the production of a P() tag which includes contenders as potential owners, subject to revision in light of new evidence. Even if produced under conditions of conflict over things, P-cues would trigger ownership intuitions with adaptive outputs, especially if one competitor also activates L-cues of cooperative assumptions and behavioral motivations (e.g., help your partner achieve full ownership).
Agent-like group ownership may become salient when all owners pursue the same goal regarding the thing as a coalition (Tooby, Cosmides, & Price, Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Price2006); for example, when “they” defend or hide a possession threatened by another party (agent or group). Yet the same people can, at another moment, dissolve their collective ownership into individual shares. Conversely, members of a coalition can pool together things for collective enterprises while recording how much each contributed to the co-owned thing. Sateni families place their sheep in large flocks and receive relative shares of cheese produced from milk collected from the whole flock (Umbres, Reference Umbres2022).
A minimal model of ownership psychology should thus represent both individual and group tags in cases of multi-person ownership. A flexible, context-dependent deployment of several ownership intuitions about a single thing should thus deal with the ubiquitous cases of building up, governing, or dismantling collective ownership in cooperative and competitive social interactions.
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Pascal Boyer persuasively proposes that ownership intuitions derive from a two-tiered process engaging cognitive systems which have independently evolved for competition over resources and, respectively, cooperation. Elegantly minimal and capable of explaining both run-of-the-mill and puzzling ideas about ownership, the model should also account for intuitions about things belonging to more than one actor – a recurrent feature documented by anthropologists across cultures.
Collaborative provisioning of resources which are impossible or costlier to pursue alone is a core feature of human cooperation. Communal sharing and collective action involve various forms of multi-person ownership of things occurring from hunter-gatherers to large-scale societies (Widlok, Reference Widlok2016). When several people collectively catch an animal, inhabit a dwelling, or tend to a fire, P-cues indicate a thing's relationships with two or more agents. Boyer argues that joint ownership produces intuitive representations of collectives as agents (e.g., nations, corporations, or lineage groups), but this only appears under special conditions, and without replacing ownership tags about individual agents.
If three people work cooperatively to produce a thing T, ownership psychology may produce a single P() label fusing all people in a single agent (“T-owners”), but also different P() labels for all agents. As children as young as 4 envision intermediary rights of members to group-owned things (Huh & Friedman, Reference Huh and Friedman2017), representations of collective ownership do not preclude thinking about individual ownership of a thing which also belongs to others. Arguably, separate entries are needed to calibrate the fair division of the benefits of cooperation (already present in preschoolers; Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevallier, Reference Baumard, Mascaro and Chevallier2012). If an individual deployed more effort, time, or skill than the others, we intuitively consider she owns more of the collective product, while matching contributions suggest equal co-ownerships.
The collapse of collectivized agriculture after the 1989 Romanian Revolution offers an interesting test of multiple ownership intuitions with or without joint agents. When villagers in Sateni divided the socialist farm assets, a dozen villagers received a newly built stable as compensation for outstanding (and equal) payments (Umbres, Reference Umbres2022). They chalk-marked walls into sections which family teams demolished and carried home the scavenged materials from their part. While peasants knew the use value of a standing building was much larger than of its components, none entertained the idea of joint ownership (or thought that others might entertain it). On reception day, all came to the site with their horse-drawn carts prepared for instant division and smoothly coordinated upon the intuitive solution of slicing up the collective asset into privately owned things.
Nonetheless, Sateni villagers often entertain representations of joint ownership as land, animals, or households are usually perceived as owned by families rather than individuals. Moreover, the family is by far the fundamental cooperative social entity in this “amoral familism” culture with deep distrust toward, and almost no expectations of cooperation between, unrelated villagers. Arguably, had a family or a group of people connected by kin ties received the building, they could have coordinated around a shared L() label associating the ownership of the whole asset to a cooperative coalition based on trial-and-tested mutual trust. Indeed, the Sateni stable was partitioned between families represented (and acting) as agentive co-owners of shares in a larger but not agentively co-owned entity.
Intuitions of partible ownership without joint agency also appear in dilemmas such as who owns a buried treasure discovered by a tenant on a landlord's property. Experiments (DeScioli & Karpoff, Reference DeScioli and Karpoff2015) show that various principles drive intuitions of property rights (often diverging from actual legal decisions) but also that people often don't have strong convictions one way or another. Respondents could thus have intuitions that both agents are owners yet choose the relatively stronger claim as required by experimenters (or legal demands). Moreover, a majority of children answer that first arrivers on an island and later arrivers own the island equally (Verkuyten, Sierksma, & Martinovic, Reference Verkuyten, Sierksma and Martinovic2015)
If two or more agents dispute a thing without a clear winner, the production of a P() tag could be deferred (no ownership intuitions until clear evidence of possession). A more likely alternative is the production of a P() tag which includes contenders as potential owners, subject to revision in light of new evidence. Even if produced under conditions of conflict over things, P-cues would trigger ownership intuitions with adaptive outputs, especially if one competitor also activates L-cues of cooperative assumptions and behavioral motivations (e.g., help your partner achieve full ownership).
Agent-like group ownership may become salient when all owners pursue the same goal regarding the thing as a coalition (Tooby, Cosmides, & Price, Reference Tooby, Cosmides and Price2006); for example, when “they” defend or hide a possession threatened by another party (agent or group). Yet the same people can, at another moment, dissolve their collective ownership into individual shares. Conversely, members of a coalition can pool together things for collective enterprises while recording how much each contributed to the co-owned thing. Sateni families place their sheep in large flocks and receive relative shares of cheese produced from milk collected from the whole flock (Umbres, Reference Umbres2022).
A minimal model of ownership psychology should thus represent both individual and group tags in cases of multi-person ownership. A flexible, context-dependent deployment of several ownership intuitions about a single thing should thus deal with the ubiquitous cases of building up, governing, or dismantling collective ownership in cooperative and competitive social interactions.
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This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interest
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