Does this thing that’s not mine *feel* like it’s mine?

For 8 to 11-year-olds in the United States and their parents (parents must complete their portion of the study prior to their child's session)

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you.

Before the scheduled session, we will email you a 20-minute survey with questions about how you feel about ownership. You will need to complete this before your child’s scheduled session, and we ask that you do not discuss the survey with your child (so you don’t influence their answers).

During the scheduled session, your child will learn about different objects that will be described as belonging to them or someone else. We will then ask your child questions about these objects to better understand how people develop feelings of ownership over things that may not legally belong to them.

Young children are quick to identify and defend their own and others’ ownership rights. However, prior work exploring children’s beliefs about ownership has largely focused on how children think about things that are legally owned. Yet, there are many instances where people are responsible for things that may not legally be theirs, like an assigned school desk or a neighborhood garden.

We want to explore children’s feelings of ownership over things that are not legally theirs. We also want to explore whether how children feel about objects that are not theirs relates to their own parents’ feelings about ownership. For this reason, we are surveying both children and parents in this study. By surveying adults, we are able to compare children’s beliefs to an adult population.

In short, this study will advance our understanding of children’s sense of ownership.

20-minute parent survey completed prior to child's session; 30-minute live session with child

We will email you a $15 Amazon gift card to the US-based Amazon store (www.amazon.com) at the end of the session! To receive compensation, you must complete your 20-minute parent survey prior to your child’s study session, your child needs to be in the age range for the study, you must be residing in the United States, and your child needs to be visible on the Zoom call.