Where does our sense of ownership come from? Kansai University led group reveals formation via agency over things

A research group has announced that they have partially revealed the mechanism by which people form their "sense of possession" of things. They found that a sense of agency over a certain thing is related to the generation of a sense of ownership of that thing. The results were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance on January 10, 2025. The group was led by Associate Professor Kyoshiro Sasaki of Kansai University's Faculty of Informatics, Professor Katsumi Watanabe of Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering, and Associate Professor Yuki Yamada of Kyushu University's Faculty of Arts and Science.

We have unique feelings about our possessions. We believe that our favorite mug, the bag we bought with our savings, the phone we handle 24/7, etc. are rightfully ours. Previous studies on this topic have been conducted in the fields of experimental psychology and consumer behavior. They have shown that a "sense of agency over things" is probably involved in the formation of our sense of ownership of things. However, the mechanism by which a sense of ownership is formed had been a mystery.

In the present study, the research group directly examined the relationship between the sense of ownership and agency over things. Throughout the series of nine experiments, participants used a mouse to manipulate a ball on a computer screen. The experiments manipulated the delay between the mouse and ball movements, and synchrony between mouse and ball movements. After the tasks, the researchers measured the participants' "sense of agency over the ball" and their "sense of possession of the ball."

The results showed that the participants felt more agency over the ball when there was no delay between the ball and mouse movements. The same was true when the ball-mouse movements were synchronized. This indicated a greater sense of ownership over the ball. Further experiments revealed that the participants deemed it important to be able to move the ball as they wished. The research project established that the feeling of owning a thing is highly dependent on being able to control it as one wishes.

The findings demonstrate that it is easy to intentionally confer a sense of ownership of an object. This approach may be useful in developing designs and interfaces that intentionally strengthen the sense of ownership. Given that a psychological sense of ownership is involved in consumer behavior, it could also be applied to marketing.

Sasaki said, "We started this project about 10 years ago with the simple question, 'How does one develop the feeling of owning something?' We'd like to push this research further. In cyberspace, one encounters immaterial 'things' that have no physical substance. We want to offer basic knowledge and technology to control people's sense of ownership of these immaterial things. In this way, we wish to make a modest contribution to achieving Society 5.0."

Journal Information
Publication: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Title: Sense of Object Ownership Changes With Sense of Agency
DOI: 10.1037/xhp0001253