Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

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Book

Document type:: Book

Collection:: POP - Possession, Ownership, Property

Title:: Ownership as interpersonal dominance: a history and three studies of the social psychology of property

Author:: Rudmin, Floyd W.

Year of publication:: 1988

Language:: English

Subject:: Besitz Eigentum Sozialpsychologie

Topic:: C - Psychology

Shelfmark:: C/R916 O9

Access:: Free access

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/pop.AC14489044

J6 dominion (r =.44, p<.001; r =.22, p <.001), with significant correlations of both verbs with each of the component verbs of dominion (claim, control, keep). However, for the ferry passengers (n=75), have correlated with dominion (r=.43, p <.001) and each of the component verbs, but possess did not correlate with dominion (r=.15, p =.10), nor with any of the component verbs of dominion. To speculate, it may be that the university respondents were more aware of the legal usages of “possession” than were the ferry respondents. The second task of the analysis was to examine the reliability of the materialism and personality scales for the two samples. As shown In Table §, Cronbach alpha coefficients for Belk’s scale of Materialism and for the three subscales which comprise it were genital lower and more variable than those found by Belk (1984; 1985) with U.S. respondents. This was particularly true of the Possessiveness and Envy subscales, which were therefore not included in subsequent correlational analyses with verbs and PRF scales. Differences between the scale reliabilities reported by Belk (1984; 1985) and those found here may be due to differences in the questionnaire embeddings of the Materialism scale in the two studies, or to differences in the research settings (e.g. university offices versus family car), or perhaps to cultural differences between Utah and Eastern Ontario in the construct of materialism. Item analysis did not suggest any particular items as being at fault for the low reliability coefficients. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 5, mean scale scores for the two samples were grossly comparable to one another and to those reported by Belk (1984; 1985a) for his Utah samples. Using dummy codings for sex (0 = female, 1=male), being male correlated with being nongenerous for the student sample (n=185, r=.16, p <.05) and for the ferry sample (n=81, r=.34, p=.001). In both groups, Materialism decreased with age (r=-.14, p <.05; r=-.21, p <.05), but of the subscales, only for Envy (r=-.20, p <.001; r=-.40, p<.001). In both groups, Materialism was sensitive to Desirability-responding (r =-.32, p <.001; r=-.37, p<.001), but again only on the Envy subscale (r=-.44, p<.001; r=-61, p<.001). For the 187 students and the 86 ferry passengers completing at least 14 items on each of the 10 PRF personality scales, alpha coefficients ranged from .50 to .88, and from .50 to .89 respectively. As shown in Table 6, these were generally comparable to PRF Form E reliability data reported by Jackson (1967/1984, Table 24). Table 6 also shows that mean scale scores and standard deviations for the two samples were grossly comparable to one another and to means

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