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

[4.9 Reinforced by psychoanalytic and semiotic theory, explanations of possessions as symbols have flourished. However, Spencer (1879/1893) in the nineteenth century and Blumberg (1974) in the twentieth century have argued that the use of possessions as status symbols should lose importance in more advanced societies. There is evidence that possessions in fact do not function as status symbols. For example, Form and Stone (1957) studied the symbolism used by persons in upper, middle, working and marginalized social classes to appraise . strangers. They found classification by status to predominate but classification by power to be nil. Surprisingly, possessions were less important for middle class subjects’ appraisals of others’ status than they were for upper and working class subjects’ appraisals. Status indicators judged unimportant or irrelevant for the appraisal of status included household furnishings, income, house, and clothing. Turner, Foa and Foa (1971) similarly found evidence that possessions did not function as status symbols. They studied students’ judgements of equivalence between reinforcers, and found status as a reinforcer to be most like love and least like goods or money. They surmised that the important difference between status and possessions as reinforcers was that possessions represent a zero-sum game, that is, the more one person gets, then the less another person has; whereas, love and status both entail simultaneous possession by one’s self and others. Thus, the economies of status and possessions are different, making their symbolic equivalence doubtful. However, Belk (1985a,b) has reviewed arguments that goods are increasingly used as status symbols as social mobility requires adaptive means of communicating status (e.g. Brooks, 1979; Belk, Bahn & Mayer, 1982; Clark, 1986; Fussell, 1983). The interpretation of possessions as status symbols and the acknowledgement of territorial dominance that follows from that have been shown by Bouska and Beatty (1978). They observed the frequency with which shoppers entering a department store would detour around a student and fellow confederate dressed as a student, businessman, or priest. The resuits showed a positive relationship between the frequency of detours and the status displayed in the dress of the confederate. Status possessions, in this case clothes, led to others acknowledging territorial SOTAIGE. This leads to the fourth tradition of research on the symbolic functions of possessions, that of marking territory. Goffman (1971) has suggested a taxonomy of markers:

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