Young children's understanding of ownership rights for newly made objects

• We investigated children's understanding of ownership rights for new objects.
• Children protested when their own objects were taken away and referred to ownership.
• 3-year-olds attributed ownership to a third party, but failed to intervene on her behalf.
• Ownership claims were due to effort invested as little ownership protest occurred for raw materials.

Young children often use simple rules of thumb to infer ownership of objects, but do they also understand ownership rights? We investigated whether 2- and 3-year-olds would react to violations of ownership rights in the context of newly made objects. In Experiment 1, children protested and made spontaneous reference to ownership when a puppet took away the child's object, but protested little when a third party's objects were at stake. Yet, 3-year-olds attributed ownership to the third party when asked ownership questions. Children's ownership claims were due to the effort invested in making new things, as they rarely used ownership protest after having handled raw materials (Experiment 2). Two- and 3-year-olds thus showed an appreciation of ownership rights for their own newly made objects. While 3-year-olds understood third party ownership, they may have lacked the motivation to intervene in ownership rights violations involving a third party.