Ownership as interpersonal dominance

Rudmin, Floyd W.

Bibliographic data

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

Rights of use:: Free access

Access:: Free access

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

29 James (1890) argued that instincts have an innate neurological basis but that they are highly modifiable by learning and habit formation (Fletcher, 1957). This was the position, as well, of Angell (1906), McDougall (1908), Thorndike (1913), Calkins (1917), Warren (1919), Rivers (1923), Pavlov (1928), Watson (1929) and others, ail of whom attributed the origins of property to instincts, either to hoard or to grasp. Although there was some opposition to this (e.g. Litwinski, 1913), basing private property on instinct was indeed popular at that time. Bernard (1924), in his attack on instinct theory for its lack of explanatory power, examined the usage of instinct terminology in over 600 books and articles written between 1900 and 1920. Under the heading of economic instincts, for example, collecting, acquiring, appropriating, grabbing, hoarding, owning, saving, he tabulated 60 different such instincts, with the instincts of acquisition and owning being the two most popular terms. The instinct theory of property also came under attack for lack of empirical support. According to James (1890), instincts should be more evident in young children than in adults because children have been less modified by personal experience and socialization. He described a study of the collecting behavior of 100 school children to demonstrate the near universality of collecting by children. This initiated a sequence of studies of children’s collecting behavior (Kline & France, 1899; Wiltse & Hall, 1891; Burk, 1900; Lehman & Witty, 1927; Whitley, 1929; Witty & Lehman, 1930; 1931). When Beaglehole (1932) reviewed the child development literature, he argued that the wide variabilities in the reported frequency of collecting among children and in the peak age of collecting did not support the claim for an instinct of acquisition. Murphy, Murphy and Newcomb (1937) also challenged the idea of a collecting instinct because of the specificity of the collections. Another social psychologist of that era concluded: Wherever acquisitiveness does appear it is not primary, as an instinct must by definition be, but secondary....It is noteworthy that the fundamental, and therefore universal, human tendency of which it is but a particular expression, is the desire for pre-eminence, dominion, approbation, and the obverse of these, the eagerness to escape the contempt of one’s fellows. (Freeman, 1936, p. 311) indeed, many child psychologists of that period independently argued that the social nature of possessory behavior by children rendered untenable explanations based on instincts of hoarding or grasping. Durost (1932) argued that collecting per se was social, Maublanc (1938) argued that possessiveness was taught to children, and Isaacs (1933), Suttie (1933) and

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