Semantics of Ownership: A Free-Recall Study of Property

Adult Canadians (N = 120) evaluated criteria of ownership by two tasks. The first was listing exemplars of things owned and things not owned and then rating applicability of criteria to exemplars. The second was judging the strength of criteria as general arguments for ownership. Cluster analysis suggested that free-recall exemplars of property were selected by four principal types of criteria: (a) control criteria (POSSESSION, ASSERTION, TERRITORIALITY) referring to the regulation of social access to the property, (b) attachment criteria (FAMILIARITY, KNOWLEDGE, AESTHETICS, UTILITY) expressing the psychological proximity of the owner to the property, (c) consumer criteria (PURCHASE, HISTORY, DESIRE) reflecting important purchases, and (d) special-acquisitions criteria (GIFT, CRAFTING). By the judgement task, only means-of-acquisition criteria (PURCHASE, CRAFTING, GIFT) were valued as strong arguments for ownership.