Cognitive Origins of Ownership Concepts

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Ownership is a key aspect of human life, affecting how we act on objects, engage in financial transactions, move within the environment, and cooperate. A rich body of research has examined the psychological basis of ownership, including how our concepts of ownership develop in early childhood. From this work we know that ownership influences cognition. We show enhanced attention toward, and memory for, owned objects, and place (sometimes irrational) value on our possessions. In the proposed studies, we will examine whether the domestic dog shows some of the same cognitive hallmarks related to owned objects as humans. Our decision to focus on dogs is based on both theoretical and practical considerations. Though dogs are more phylogenetically distant from us than our fellow primates, they are unique in their relationship with humans. We grant them ownership of objects in much same way as we do with children. Some have suggested that, historically, the territorial protection that dogs provided was necessary for the ownership of property, and thus, selection for traits during canine domestication was intertwined with the development of our own ownership concepts. Through a series of experiments, we will systematically examine whether pet and working dogs show enhanced attention, memory, and value toward objects that they `own' (i.e., that they have had consistent or frequent, permitted access to, favour, and voluntarily engage with). From a practical side, in the training and evaluation of working dogs, "toys" are often used as reinforcers and stimuli. Researchers who wish to evaluate working dogs measure, for example, dogs' focus on toys (via working memory tasks), persistence in obtaining toys in an unsolvable task, and persistence in retrieving a toy, all of which, to some extent, are related to later certification. Dogs' history with these toys has not been systematically manipulated in these tasks, however, and thus we do not know whether ownership - and related cognitive biases -- would affect performance.