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

a1 Within the biological tradition of ethology discussed earlier, several studies have also provided evidence that possessiveness precedes altruism. It is important to realize, however, that there is considerable opportunity for confounded interpretations in ethological research on dominance and sharing. For example, Eisenberg-Berg, Hand, and Haake’s (1981) observed that preschoolers who stayed within restricted areas surrendered their possessions more frequently than those who moved more freely about the classroom. The interpretation of this was that those with restricted movement were “territorial” and that they “shared” more than non-territorial children. In a subsequent study, Eisenberg and Giallanza (1984) again considered surrendering to be evidence of sharing. Savin-Willlams, Small and Zeldin (1981) compared ethological, peer-rating and psychometric measures of dominance and altruism in two groups of adolescent boys in a summer camp. Although not discussed by the authors, their data show that all measures of dominance were positively correlated with all measures of altruism; in particular, the dominance subscale of the California Psychological Inventory (Megargee, 1972) was significantly related to the frequency of altruistic behavior (n=12, r=.56, p<.05) and to the Schwartz (1968) Ascription of Responsibility Scale (n=12, r=.73, p<.01). These correlations could be reflections of social desirability or extroversion, or it could be that dominance is leadership and that leaders tend to be altruistic towards their dependents (Krebs, 1970). Thus, power would be antecedent to social responsibility. This interpretation would concur with the sociobiological study by Charlesworth and La Freniere (1983) in which preschoolers with high dominance status did use an attractive toy more than those with low dominance, but the dominant children aiso facilitated cooperation, sharing and overall use. Camras (1984) replicated this with the refinement of using teacher ratings to determine dominance independently of the behaviors being observed. In a longitudinal study of two-year-olds in Israel, Frankel and Arbel (1980) reported that dominance relationships enhanced group formation and that prior possession of an object had priority over dominance status in determining object use. A third tradition of studying property and moral development in children emerges from the work of Piaget (1932), which in turn can be traced to Baldwin (1897) and to concepts of self and dialectic in nineteenth century German philosophy. Although much of the early research on children’s ego development and use of self-referent speech was inspired by Piaget, his impact

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