Children's judgments about ownership rights and body rights: Evidence for a common basis

- Two experiments investigated 3-7-year-olds judgements of ownership rights and body rights.
- Both kinds of judgments were similarly affected by physical contact.
- Both kinds of judgments developed in parallel.
- Developmental parallels between the judgments held over disparate objects and body parts.
- The findings suggest that conceptions ownership and body rights may have a common basis.

We report two experiments supporting the theory that children's understanding of ownership rights is related to their notions of body rights. Experiment 1 investigated 4- to 7-year-olds' (N = 123) developing sensitivity to physical contact in their judgments about the acceptability of behaving in relation to owned objects and body parts. Experiment 2 used a simpler design to investigate this in 3- and 4-year-olds (N = 112). Findings confirmed two predictions of the theory. First, in both experiments, children's judgments about ownership and body rights were similarly affected by physical contact. Second, judgments about both kinds of rights were yoked in development; age-related changes in judgments about ownership rights were paralleled by changes in judgments about body rights. Our findings have additional import for theories of ownership rights because they suggest that physical contact may be a crucial factor in whether behaviors targeting property are judged to be permissible.