Psychological ownership and prosocial behavior

Research on the consequences of psychological ownership has mostly focused on its effects on the relationship with a specific target of ownership. But could it be that psychological ownership also has carry-over effects on domains unrelated to the specific target of ownership? A new research by Ata Jami (Northwestern University), Maryam Kouchaki (Northwestern University), and Francesca Gino (Harvard University) examines this question. Specifically, the authors propose that psychological ownership increases prosocial behavior behavior because it boosts people’s self-esteem and therefore makes them more willing to help out. They also identify materialism and mine-me sensitivity as moderators of this effect. This research suggests that psychological ownership besides having profound implications on our relationships with possessions can also affect behavior in unrelated domains, such as altruistic behavior.

You can read more about this research here.

Smell and psychological ownership

A recent research reveals a novel antecedent of psychological ownership: smell. Ruta Ruzeviciute (University of Amsterdam), Bernadette Kamleitner (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Dipayan Biswas (University of South Florida) examined the effect of scented advertising on product appeal. They found that scented as opposed to non-scented advertising increases product appeal. Interestingly, the authors found that the mechanism accounting for this effect is a sense of proximity induced by scent, which in turn increases psychological ownership. In other words, when people smell a scented (vs. non-scented) ad, they like the advertised product more because they experience it as being closer to them and more ‘theirs’. These findings add to the literature on proximity as an antecedent of psychological ownership implying that it is not only through direct contact and touch that people can experience psychological ownership, as prior research has shown; smell can also induce psychological ownership through its ability to represent the essence of an object that is not physically present.

You can read more about this research here.

Does object valence moderate the self-ownership effect?

The self-ownership effect is well-documented in the literature: Objects that are owned by the self are categorized faster than objects owned by others. This effect has been repeatedly shown indicating that the self is a very powerful category that influences memory and information processing. However, not much is known about boundary conditions of this effect and more specifically if valence of the objects plays a role. Prior research has mostly used abstract geometric shapes. But what about objects that differ in their desirability? Does the self-ownership effect hold for all self-owned objects or only for those with positive valence? This is the question that Marius Golubickis (University of Aberdeen, UK; University of Toronto, Canada), Nerissa S. P. Ho (University of York, UK), Johanna K. Falbén (University of Aberdeen), Carlotta L. Schwertel (University of Aberdeen), Alessia Maiuri (University of Aberdeen), Dagmara Dublas (University of Aberdeen), William A. Cunningham (University of Toronto, Canada), and C. Neil Macrae (University of Aberdeen) addressed in their research. Their results show that object desirability does play a role and that the effect of ownership is moderated by pre-existing object properties. That is, the effect holds only when desirable (vs. undesirable) objects are owned by the self and is reversed for objects owned by others. These findings offer new insights into the self-ownership effect and the moderating role of valence.

You can read more about this research here.





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Stay home and enjoy!

Psychological ownership @ SCP 2020

At the upcoming Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) conference in Huntington Beach, CA, there will be a session dedicated to the topic of psychological ownership. The session is called “Experiencing ‘MINENESS’: Extensions of Psychological Ownership in New Consumer Contexts” and is chaired by Ipek Demirdag, University of California Los Angeles. According to the conference website, it includes the following talks: “Creating Ownership Where Ownership Does not Exist: Psychological Ownership Increases Enjoyment in Sharing Economy” (Demirdag and Shu); “Virtual Touch Facilitates Psychological Ownership of Products in Virtual Reality” (Luangrath, Peck, Hedgcock, and Xu); “‘It Can (Cannot) Be Mine’: How a Person in a Photo Impacts the Viewer’s Perception of a New Experiential Product” (Lu, Peck, and Barfield); and “Psychology of Heritage: The Endowment Effect for Extraordinary Goods” (Christensen and Shu). The session will take place on Saturday 7 March from 9:10 to 10:30 am at Salon F of Hyatt Regency Hotel in Huntington Beach, CA. If you are attending the conference, don’t forget to mark your calendars. We are excited to hear more about current developments in psychological ownership research!

So happy that it’s mine!



Colleen P. Kirk, New York Institute of Technology




A growing market





A willingness to pay





AP Photo/Angie Wang

Who’s in control?











Master or servant





Colleen P. Kirk, Assistant Professor of Marketing, New York Institute of Technology


“I found this bar on my own!” Here is what happens next…

Have you ever found a bar or a café on your own, without any prior information or recommendations from others? If yes, have you ever wondered what consequences the sense that this venue is ‘your’ discovery might have on your subsequent relationship with the venue? A new research by two contributors of this blog, Michail Kokkoris and Bernadette Kamleitner (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business), together with Erik Hoelzl (University of Cologne), examines this question and provides novel insights into service marketing. A series of studies including various methodologies (field study, representative survey, online and lab experiments) and various service domains (cafés, bars, restaurants) provides evidence that the way a venue is first found has an impact on customers’ attitudes and behaviors towards this venue. Specifically, when customers have the sense that they discovered a venue on their own (rather than assisted by some information or others’ recommendations), they report stronger bonds with the venue in terms of self-connection, emotional attachment, and psychological ownership. In turn, stronger customer bonds translate into higher customer loyalty. For example, a survey with a presentative sample of Viennese coffee-goers showed that customers who have discovered a venue on their own spend more money in the specific venue compared to other venues, plan to come back more often and are willing to pay more even in the case of price increases. However, this seems to hold only for discoveries with a positive outcome, that is, when the overall experience with the venue is outstanding in the first place. In short, the sense of own discovery may have some previously unacknowledged benefits for businesses – an idea that is perhaps ‘heretical’ in the era of social media, where most businesses strive for attention and visibility. Letting customers discover venues on their own and have this ‘eureka’ experience can have beneficial managerial implications. Next time you accidentally stumble on a bar that no one has talked to you about, be prepared: A long-lasting, intimate relationship between you and the bar might be just beginning!

You can read more about this research here.

“Mine” helps remind – also in toddlers

People tend to recall new pieces of information that are classified as “mine” better than information that is classified as “others’”. This effect has been called self-referencing. Why is that happening? Knowledge of oneself is vast and rich in detail. Therefore, anything that is directly associated with the self is encoded in greater detail and better linked to existing categories of knowledge. This increased elaboration and organization of information that is associated with the self subsequently results in higher recall. This well-established effect has been repeatedly demonstrated in adults, but research in kids is sparse. Moreover, it remains unclear at what age the self-referencing effect first appears. This is the research gap that Emma L. Axelsson (Australian National University, Australia; Uppsala University, Sweden), Rachelle L. Dawson, Sharon Y. Yim and Tashfia Quddus (Australian National University, Australia) tried to fill with their recent research. In their study, they used the self-reference ownership paradigm with 3-year-old children and examined their retention of novel words. Specifically, children were presented with novel word-object pairings. For some of the objects they were told that they belonged to them, whereas for others they were told that they belonged to others. Immediately after this task, it was found that children recalled much better the self-referenced words than the other-referenced words. However, the difference between self-referenced and other-referenced words dissipated when children were tested 4 hours later or the next morning. The importance of these findings is that they show for the first time that toddlers already at the age of 3 have an improved memory of words classified as “mine”, although this seems to diminish over time. Apparently, the self-referencing effect is rooted in early developmental stages of humans. Take advantage of this finding and next time you want a toddler to memorize a word, make sure you pair it with “their” toy!

You can read more about this research here.

Listening to my music – and wanting more of it


You can read more about this research here.