Psychological ownership: implicit and explicit

Abstract

Object ownership changes how people perceive objects and self through psychological ownership-the feeling that a thing is MINE. Psychological ownership usually tracks legal ownership, but the two can and do diverge. In this integrative review, I propose a dual-process model of psychological ownership. Antecedents of psychological ownership form self-object associations prompting an implicit inference of psychological ownership, which can then be accepted, corrected, or rejected by explicit judgments. The model explains cases where psychological ownership and legal ownership conflict and predicts psychological ownership felt in a variety of relationships between people and objects, including objects they legally own and use, objects they use but do not legally own, and objects they legally own but do not use.