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MINE! That word appears early in life. Toddlers have an idea of ownership.
They also have an idea of what can be owned, and what can’t.
Children as young as three believe human-made objects are owned but naturally occurring things like pinecones are not.
In one experiment 3-year olds looked at pictures of a fork, teddy bear, truck, and other human-made objects. They also looked at pictures of a leaf, shell, or rock. The researchers asked: Does this belong to anyone?
The kids classified human-made objects as owned 89 percent of the time and naturally occurring objects as owned only 28 percent of the time.
In another experiment scientists tested children with less familiar objects like a grenade versus coral. This time children under 6 did not tend to name the manufactured object as owned. But when the unfamiliar, artificial objects were referred to as “human-made,” the younger children tended to classify them as owned. The work appears in the journal Developmental Psychology. (pdf)
It is apparently only much later in life, when individuals have reached a seasoned maturity, that they can conceive of ownership of natural objects. “You kids get off of my lawn!”
—Christie Nicholson
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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11 Comments
Add CommentThere is a difference between a natural object and a bit of territory. Ask the toddlers if they own their room.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me it could just as easily mean they understand that man made objects sre usually claimed by someone, where as natural objects lying around are not. It doesn't mean they can't be owned, just that they haven't been grabbed and claimed yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoorly designed research, methinks. Clearly intended to arrive at a pre-determined position, and designed with that in mind. Why has Scientific American even bothered with this pseudo-scientific claptrap?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore likely it shows that the savy, youngster doesn't like rocks or pinecones. We start them in the womb on material desires.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA lawn is a manufactured object.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is an interesting similarity between the feelings of toddlers stated in this good article and the laws in ancient Rome. Some things were considered "Res nullius", property of nobody, but they were differences about, for example a boar hunted in somebody's land, the land owner having rights on it,property of land was up to the stars and down to the hells, this is the explanation of the Christ's parabole about somebody finding a treasure in a land, thus selling all properties to buy this land. The case of an animal hunted in somebody's place was different to that hunted in a wood or other place with no clear attribution of property. For sure somebody with a true expertise in Roman Law will be able to add more on this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere were also regulations about who was attributed the property of wood, the matter of excellence, depending on whether is was found in a riverside, the river of a lake, and in other places. In some places, children do try to protect and mark their rights to occupate a place, for example a chair, by leaving there an object they call a "frog"
A bit off the topic, but, I am amazed that dogs know something is inanimate and so too with small children, even though they can be engaged in make-believe play with an object so that it takes on human-like qualities. But, I do remember around the age of 2 years-old, my father brought home a large black spider made of yarn. I was certain it was real. I remember crying and screaming as my father and siblings teased me with it. (Thanks for the trauma, fam.) Maybe if children are shown inanimate objects associated with normal childhood fears, they will conclude they are not human-made, but owned by the monsters in the closet (just as long as a therapist is on hand during the experiment).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLike byronraum said, a lawn is not necessarily natural. Perhaps the idea of ownership comes from having put one's effort into the object? Also, there is a difference between what can be owned versus whether it actually is. A rock can be owned, but is not usually (unless it is made of something like gold). The question asked of the children was whether someone actually owned the things, not whether they could be owned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all they are asking is "is this owned, or not?", and the answer must be "yes" or "no", I think you would get exactly the same result by asking adults. Man-made objects would be assumed to be owned, and natural objects would not. They are not asking "CAN someone own this?". Also, I suspect that if the children were shown a video of another child finding the pinecone/shell/whatever and putting it into a box, and THEN asked if the object were owned, I think the results would be very different. Certainly my young children often claimed ownership of little things they found, even if they were natural.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUltimately, it sounds like a flawed study - or at the very least, the results do not show what 60-Second Mind suggest that they show.
Can you explain in what way it is poorly designed? Or what about the design suggests the research was "clearly intended to arrive at a pre-determined position"? Can you specify what that position is?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou left out the word "stupidly". A lawn is a stupidly manufactured object. Taking a plant and encouraging it to grow so you can mutilate it regularly is plain stupid. My yard is garden and ground ivy. Neighborhood kids come over to play all the time because our yard is more interesting than a flat boring lawn.
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