On the Social Nature of Nonsocial Perception: The Mere Ownership Effect

The assumption of the present research was that ownership of an object causes the owner to treat the object as a social entity because ownership creates a psychological association between the object and the owner. Three experiments investigated whether Ss would evaluate an object more favorably mer...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 1992-02, Vol.62 (2), p.229-237
Main Author: Beggan, James K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Behavior. Attitude
Biological and medical sciences
Evaluation
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Ownership
Perception
Perceptions
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social psychology
Social research
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Summary:The assumption of the present research was that ownership of an object causes the owner to treat the object as a social entity because ownership creates a psychological association between the object and the owner. Three experiments investigated whether Ss would evaluate an object more favorably merely because they owned it, a bias analogous to other self-serving biases people display. Study 1 confirmed the existence of this mere ownership effect. Study 2 showed that the effect was not due to Ss having greater exposure to an owned object relative to an unowned object. Study 3 showed that the effect may be a specific instance of a general tendency of people to make self-enhancing judgments.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.62.2.229