by Bruce Hood
A MERE CONCEPT
I opened this book by focusing on bodies, values, ideas and information because they are so personal, and seemingly obviously owned. But ownership is a convention that varies over time and across civilizations. Disputes over ownership may be resolved using legal and moral systems established thousands of years ago, but more often we need lawyers, since ownership can be interpreted in different ways. It also seems likely that there will be continuing need to revise the laws of ownership as societies change. The problem of establishing ownership was pointed out by the English moral philosopher Jeremy Bentham, when he wrote, ‘There is no image, no painting, no visible trait, which can express the relation that constitutes property. It is not material, it is metaphysical; it is a mere conception of the mind.’51 In other words, ownership does not exist in Nature but rather is constructed in the human mind. As such, it is a concept – a thought – but, nevertheless, a very powerful one. Ownership controls just about every aspect of our daily lives: what we can claim rights over; what we can and cannot do with property; and where or where not we can go. Without ownership, our lives would be chaotic and unstructured, which is why it is at the core of our legal systems and the basis for the norms of social behaviour that most of us abide by. When we ignore ownership, or fail to recognize it, we are acting antisocially and, in some cases, illegally.
Ownership not only shapes society by its rules and legislation, it controls us psychologically as well. Legal ownership is a product of society; hence the rights that come with ownership are specified and protected by the legal system. But there is more to ownership than the law. We pursue possessions even though we do not necessarily need them. There is something deep in our minds, as if we are emotionally compelled to possess. This is psychological ownership, an emotional experience generated by the satisfaction of ownership which does not always correspond with legal ownership. We may legally own something but not care about it. In contrast, we can care about things we do not legally own, and yet feel we do. It is purely a state of mind.
In writing about psychological ownership, Jon Pierce and his colleagues described a common phenomenon in the workplace to illustrate how it can easily arise.52 Truck drivers employed at a mine did not feel ownership over the trucks they operated until a new company policy was implemented that assigned each driver to a particular truck. Prior to that, the drivers had not looked after the trucks they drove. After the trucks were allocated, however, they gradually began to refer to their truck as ‘my’ truck, to clean its interior and to attend to mechanical maintenance. One driver even named his truck and spent his own money to have this name painted on the doors. It was his. Similarly, racing drivers do not own the team sportscars they drive, but they nevertheless come to experience a deep sense of ownership over their particular car.
We can all relate to this. Consider how many things you do not legally own but think of as yours. If we rent a car, then we are not particularly attached to it, but a leased car is usually a different story. Even though we do not technically own a leased car (the finance company owns the property), we readily perceive personal ownership and treat it with much more care. The same is true for the majority of properties bought on mortgages: we do not legally own them until we have settled the debt but still regard such houses as ‘ours’. And many people feel ownership of their rental properties, especially if they have lived there for a long time, which is why it can be difficult for developers to evict people even though they don’t own their homes. You might regard this as a technicality, if you have a mortgage, because you will own your property outright in the future. However, that reasoning does not capture the deep psychological connection we have to our possessions. Repossession is not simply an economic hardship, but an assault on our sense of self.
In order to understand why, we need to explore this powerful psychological dimension of ownership. For many of us, our lives are controlled by this relentless pursuit of ownership. Where does the urge come from? In the next chapter we consider this question from a biological perspective.
2
Non-humans Possess, But Only Humans Can Own
THE RACE FOR LIFE
Two long-distance runners are crossing the Serengeti when they stop for a break and decide to take off their shoes. At that point they see that a ferocious lion has spotted them and is starting to charge towards them. One of the runners starts to quickly put on his shoes. The other runner gasps, ‘There’s no point trying to out-run that lion, she is much faster than a human.’ Whereupon the other replies, ‘I don’t have to out-run the lion; I only have to out-run you!’ This old joke captures the essence of natural selection, the process of evolution that explains the diversity of life on Earth as a competition to survive and reproduce. The fight for survival is not only against the elements but also against your competitors. You simply have to outperform your rivals.
Humans are competitive by nature. In 1898, the psychologist Norman Triplett noticed that cyclists’ performance times were faster when they competed against each other rather than against the clock. In what is considered the first ever social-psychology experiment, he measured how fast children reeled in their fishing lines in a game where either they were alone or in competition against another child.1 Just like the athletes, the children were faster competing against each other. Triplett called this the ‘competitive instinct’ and it appears to be a fundamental behaviour found across the animal kingdom. The most obvious competitive situation is feeding time. When you next see your kids scoffing down their food at the dinner table, don’t scold them for being animals. Feeding frenzies have been observed in every species, from armadillos to zebras, when there are many mouths to feed.
Even though we rarely fight over food in civilized society, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, and many of us will recognize those instances when we have felt competitive with our in-laws, our friends or colleagues. A study of 5,000 British adults revealed that irrespective of how much money workers were earning, they were more dissatisfied if they thought a fellow worker, doing the same job, was earning more than them.2 The problem is that we are not very accurate in our perceptions. Another survey, of over 71,000 employees, revealed that nearly two-thirds of individuals who were paid the market rate for their job believed that they were underpaid, compared to only 6 per cent who thought they were overpaid.3 And among individuals who were actually paid above the market rate for their job, only one in five thought they were overpaid. A third thought they deserved more. Not only are we competitive but we feel undervalued and assume that others are doing better than us.
One obvious way we compare ourselves is through what we own. The desire to have more is motivated by the relative difference in ownership between ourselves and those we regard as our closest rivals. As the American satirist H. L. Mencken once joked, wealth is any income that is at least $100 more annually than the income of your wife’s sister’s husband.4 It may have been a quip, but studies show that this sibling rivalry is true. Women with husbands who earn less than their sister’s husband are more likely to take on work themselves in order to bring in more money so that they have a higher relative family income than that of their sister.5
Ownership is clearly competitive but there are two schools of thought when it comes to understanding its origins. Evolutionary accounts argue that ownership is a legacy of the competitive instinct where having exclusive access to valuable resources gives you the upper hand in the struggle to survive and reproduce. This could be simple possession where access is important. The other school of thought argues that ownership is different from possession in that it is cultural and emerges when communities settled to develop political and legal systems. Here the competition is primarily social. For humans, both positions must be correct to some extent, and both can be seen as strategies for survival. However, as we will see, possession is common in the animal kingdom, whereas ownership is only found in human societies.
To take possession comes from the L
atin, possidere, which literally means ‘to sit or put one’s weight or foot over’. When dogs place their paw on humans, we usually interpret it as a sign of affection, but it is actually a mark of dominance. Their wolf genes are still showing the signs of the hierarchy of the pack. Possession gives you control, which gives you the competitive edge. The problem is attaining that control and maintaining it once you have it. Direct physical competition leads to potentially costly conflicts, which is why certain behavioural strategies emerge as a way of reducing such costs by avoiding confrontation.
One such strategy is known as the ‘first possession rule’, resulting in an advantage when defending resources. You might call it the ‘first dibs’ rule. It’s considered innate because even the simplest animals instinctively operate with the first possession rule without any need to learn it. Unlike strategies based on brain or brawn, successful possession in these circumstances is less related to the mental or physical attributes of competitors (though it is true that the fastest, strongest and smartest are the most likely to take possession first) but can still emerge as a stable strategy to avoid conflict for less well-endowed competitors. For one thing, first possessors are more willing to defend their property. A number of species will respect first possession even when the possessor is more diminutive and could be overcome. Crickets will take on larger challengers when first possession is established, whereas larger competitors tend to back off from smaller crickets in possession.6
Deferring to the first possession rule is observed throughout the animal kingdom. Consider the butterfly. Male butterflies are aggressive and will fight to claim possession of a sunny spot which is desirable for attracting mates. They are assertive in defending a resource they discover first but are deferential when they arrive upon it late. For first possession to become stable, however, both parties need to know when to be assertive and when to be deferential. An animal that does not defend its territory will be easily overrun by usurpers, whereas an aggressive competitor will compete for resources which are fiercely defended. Knowing when to back off or stand your ground requires some observable criterion of that condition being met. If there is some ambiguity, then both parties may feel entitled to claim possession and fight accordingly, which is why speckled wood butterflies will engage in battle for ten times longer if two have touched down on the spot at the same time – they both thought they saw it first.7
The primacy of first possession is also one of the fundamental principles of legal systems across the globe.8 It is such an important factor in determining legal ownership that it has given rise to the common adage that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’. Even though there is no such universal equation, this does convey the general legal principle that the individual in possession is presumed to be the rightful owner and that the onus is on any challenger to demonstrate that their claim is stronger.
THE MANUFACTURING MIND
Many animals possess food, territory and mates, but humans are unique in that we also make artefacts that we treasure and pass on to our relatives. Transfer of these material possessions depends on establishing the concept of ownership, because you cannot take or give away what is not yours in the first place.
We have been making things since before we became Homo sapiens. The earliest tools (stone hammers, anvils and knives), discovered in Kenya,9 date to around 3.3 million years ago and were made by our early hominid ancestors long before modern humans appeared on the scene about 300,000 years ago. We are not the only animal that makes tools, but we are the only one that holds on to them. The only other creature known to retain a tool is the sea otter, which keeps a small pebble for cracking open shellfish.10 Compare that to our ancestors who not only produced a vast array of tools but other artefacts that they valued and became emotionally attached to. Wild animals are not known to hold on to possessions unless they are food, territory or mates.
Not only did early humans manufacture possessions but they traded them. We know that for at least 40,000 years during the Upper Palaeolithic era humans have engaged in barter and trade, as artefacts from this period have been found in geographical locations that are considerable distances from their original source. Shells from Mediterranean shores ended up hundreds of miles away in various locations across Northern Europe.11 The most likely explanation is that they were traded by travellers. Bartering is a hallmark of human behaviour that is not commonly seen in other species. It not only requires communication to negotiate with another, but the ability to work out the relative value of items. Both monkeys and apes can be taught to barter, but this requires extensive training. Moreover, once trained to exchange with an experimenter, they do not trade with each other and the behaviour disappears if it is not enforced.12 In other words, trading is not in their nature.
In our research, we have looked at barter in a variety of great apes. My colleague Patricia Kanngiesser, a developmental psychologist, demonstrated that chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans who have been trained to exchange goods all prefer to keep food once it is in their possession and are reluctant to barter with an experimenter.13 Food in the hand is worth more than what’s on offer. To tempt them, the food offered has to be a significantly more enticing option before they’ll make the exchange. It’s not that the apes think they will be cheated, but rather they find it difficult to give up possession of food. There is something so enticing about food – a bird in the hand is literally worth more than two in a bush. However, primates rarely exhibit similar attachment to other possessions such as tools, even when they are necessary to retrieve food. Once used, artefacts are discarded.
Humans, on the other hand, actively accumulate possessions. The whole of human history is a treasure trove of manufactured possessions, the oldest of which we now put on display in our museums. We admire the possessions of others. Personally, I love to marvel at these historic items to make a connection with our distant relatives, as a way of identifying our similarities as much as our differences. The Upper Palaeolithic era was a golden era for prehistoric production as there was an explosion in the archaeological record of sophisticated artefacts, especially in the southwest of France beginning around 40,000 years ago. Prior to this period, the earliest example of non-tool manufacture was jewellery in the form of eagle talons, dating to around 130,000 years ago, that were worn around the neck of a cousin of modern humans, the Neanderthals.14 It is true that some animals can create beautiful material things, such as the sand sculptures of the male Japanese pufferfish or the elaborate bowers of the Australian bowerbird, but these temporary displays are solely for the purpose of attracting mates. Like animal tools, once their purpose is served, they are abandoned.
In contrast, early humans were painting caves and making figurines that must have had some symbolic meaning and, most importantly, were meant to last. They were creating possessions that were to be passed on in this life and the next. Both early humans and Neanderthals buried their dead with artefacts. Some of these items took many hundreds of hours of manufacturing effort, so they had value in terms of the sheer amount of labour invested. They were not discarded but, rather, must have formed part of rituals. We can only speculate about the reasons for this burial practice, but it seems reasonable to infer that these items either belonged to or were given to the deceased in a belief in an afterlife.15
Arguably, as humans accumulated possessions of worth, these were traded for food, territory, services and sex. Tempting the opposite sex with nuptial gifts, however, is not unique to humans; animals also use bribes. Many species of male insects, including flies, spiders and crickets, provide food parcels to potential female mates. Male chimpanzees offer meat to potential partners to increase the likelihood of mating, even though this may take some length of time with repeated offerings.16 However, humans were the first materialistic animals that valued possessions in their own right. These possessions were symbolic, aesthetic, valued as extensions of our identity, carried around, protected, revered and, ultimately, passed on to others. Such
transfers could only take place by understanding ownership rules. Abiding by the rules of ownership ultimately enabled stable societies to emerge, societies built upon the foundations of property accumulation and transfer of wealth.
RELATIVE VALUES
After the last ice age, human activity shifted from migrating hunter-gatherer subsistence to settled communities that began to cultivate crops and domesticate wild animals. As we transitioned into agricultural societies, humans began to produce surpluses of resources that could be stored or stolen. This is when ownership became crucially important. We can speculate that property laws emerged in civilizations as ways to organize and control their members. Transient societies became established ones, with ordered structures that passed from one generation to the next, providing continuity and stability.
Ownership was a powerful accelerant in this process. Social hierarchies were fuelled by the desire to accumulate wealth, through commerce and military campaigns. These hierarchies became the ruling elite with political power to control citizens. Economic wealth created a mechanism for prosperity that freed individuals from the daily chores of survival. Artisans and intellectuals thrived, supported by a system where they did not have to manually labour to maintain subsistence. Ownership provided a legitimate and sustained justification for the order that citizens grew up in.
Today most parents want their children to succeed, and this usually encompasses a good education, career and marriage. These are the ingredients not only for a happy life, but also for long lineages. As parents, we devote resources to improve the lives of our children, which sounds like a sacrifice but, in biological terms, is simply a strategy of the genes to get themselves replicated from one generation to the next. This ‘selfish gene’ perspective, familiar to many through the popular science writing of Richard Dawkins, still grates with most parents who believe they are acting selflessly.