Emotion

2015, Vol. 15, No. 1, 104 108

2014 American Psychological Association

1528-3542/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000027

Preschoolers and Toddlers Use Ownership to Predict Basic Emotions

Madison L. Pesowski and Ori Friedman

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

University of Waterloo
Peoples emotions often depend on ownership. We report 3 experiments showing that preschoolers and
toddlers consider ownership in predicting basic emotions. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds were sensitive to
ownership when predicting how a character would feel when objects went missing. Experiment 2 found
that 3- to 5-year-olds consider ownership when predicting emotional reactions to harmless violations of
ownership rights, and Experiment 3 showed 2-year-olds also do this. For instance, preschoolers and
toddlers predicted a girl would be upset when a boy played with her teddy bear without permission, but
not when he played with his own. These findings show that preschoolers and toddlers understand basic
causal relations between ownership and emotions, and are also the first to show that 2-year-olds are
sensitive to other peoples ownership rights.
Keywords: ownership, basic emotions, children, predicting emotions, causal knowledge

Harris, Olthof, Terwogt, & Hardman, 1987; Russell & Widen,

2002; Strayer, 1986; Widen & Russell, 2004; see also Fabes,
Eisenberg, Nyman, & Michealieu, 1991), and their explanations of
happiness, sadness, and anger sometimes reference ownership
(Fabes et al., 1991; Strayer, 1986; Russell & Widen, 2002; Widen
& Russell, 2004). For example, when asked to explain others
emotions, children explain that a child is angry because a girl took
his toy, or that a child is happy because she received a new bike
(Fabes et al., 1991; Strayer, 1986). However, studies in which
children provided such explanations did not code for ownership,
and do not report the frequency with which these explanations are
given. Hence, it is unclear whether children typically consider
ownership in their causal reasoning about emotions, or whether
this is rare.
The possibility that young children grasp the impact of ownership
on emotions is also broadly consistent with findings showing that they
are adept in reasoning about ownership (e.g., Blake, Ganea, & Harris,
2012; Friedman & Neary, 2008; Gelman, Manczak, & Noles, 2012;
Kanngiesser, Gjersoe, & Hood, 2010; see Nancekivell, Van de
Vondervoort, & Friedman, 2013, for a review). Preschoolers understand that ownership determines the acceptability of behaviors (e.g.,
Neary & Friedman, 2014; Rossano, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2011;
Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2013), and so they might appreciate
its emotional consequences, too.

Emotions often depend on ownership. People are upset when their

property is damaged or used without permission, and are elated when
their lost belongings are found. Knowing how ownership influences
emotions is important because it allows us to predict and understand
emotional reactions in many situations. For example, it allows us to
anticipate that although many people might be upset if a car is stolen,
the owner is likely to be especially upset about it.
Even young children might grasp the impact of ownership on
emotions. Two kinds of findings are broadly consistent with this,
but neither provides decisive evidence. First, preschool-aged children can predict when certain events will cause happiness, sadness,
and anger (Arsenio, 1988; Barden, Zelko, Duncan, & Masters,
1980; Borke, 1971, 1973; Brody & Harrison, 1987; Stein &
Levine, 1989; for reviews see Harris, 2008, and Widen & Russell,
2008), and these events often involve owned property (Arsenio,
1988; Borke, 1971). For example, studies show that children can
predict how a story character will feel when her toy is stolen
(Arsenio, 1988) and how they themselves would feel if their
cookie was taken by someone else (Brody & Harrison, 1987).
Information about ownership may have influenced childrens predictions in these studies. However, this is uncertain because ownership was not manipulated, and so perhaps children would respond identically even without information about ownership. For
example, children might predict that a character will feel sad when
a toy breaks, even if they are not told it belongs to her.
Second, 3- and 4-year-olds are able to generate explanations for
why people feel a variety of emotions (Denham & Zoller, 1991;

Theories of Childrens Causal Knowledge of Emotions

Although some findings suggest that young children may appreciate the influence of ownership on emotions, ownership has
not figured in theories of how young children understand the
causes of emotions. One way children understand the causes of
emotions is by learning scripts about the kinds of external events
that typically lead to various emotions (Gove & Keating, 1979;
Hughes, Tingle, & Sawin, 1981; Widen & Russell, 2010, 2011; see
Chiarella & Poulin-Dubois, 2013, for related findings with infants). Consistent with this, 3-year-olds predict that happiness
follows from positive events (e.g., receiving a favorite snack) and
that sadness follows from negative events (e.g., not being allowed
to play; Borke, 1971). Another way children reason about the

This article was published Online First October 6, 2014.

Madison L. Pesowski and Ori Friedman, Department of Psychology,
University of Waterloo.
Research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to Ori Friedman.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ori
Friedman, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue W, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1. E-mail:
friedman@uwaterloo.ca
104

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OWNERSHIP AND EMOTIONS

causes of emotions is by considering peoples mental states (theory of mind), including their goals, desires, and beliefs. Consistent with this, 2- and 3-year-olds predict that people will feel happy
if their desires are fulfilled, but will feel sad if their desires instead
go unfulfilled (Wellman & Bartsch, 1988; Wellman & Woolley,
1990; see also Skerry & Spelke, 2014, for related findings with
infants). Finding that children also consider ownership in predicting emotions would extend understanding of how they predict
emotions and understand their causes.
The present experiments examine young childrens understanding of the causal impact of ownership on emotions. A first experiment examines whether 3-year-olds judge that individuals emotions are influenced more when their own property is lost and
found than when these events occur for others property. The next
experiments examine whether preschoolers and toddlers anticipate
emotional reactions to harmless violations of ownership rights.

Experiment 1
Method
Participants. Forty 3-year-olds participated (M 3;5 [years;
months]; range 3;0 to 3;11; 21 females). One additional child was
excluded from analysis for failing to successfully complete a training
task. In this experiment and those subsequent, children were recruited
from and tested at preschools and day care centers. Although further
demographic information was not formally collected, participants
were predominantly White and from middle-class families.
Materials and procedure. Children first completed a training
task to familiarize them with an emotion scale. This was shown on a
laptop computer, as were all materials in the current the experiments (e.g.,
pictures used to narrate scenarios). The emotion scale depicted drawings
of three faces: a sad face, a happy face, and a just okay face that was
emotionally neutral (see Figure 1). The experimenter pointed at each face
and stated its emotion (e.g., This face is happy), in the fixed order
happy, sad, and just okay. Children were then asked to identify the
face for each emotional state (e.g., Which one is sad?). To be included
in the experiment, children had to pass all three questions.
Children were next told a story about a girl at a park with her
teddy bear. The girl placed her teddy bear on a bench, which also
had someone elses teddy bear on it. The girl then went off to play,
but twice returned to the park bench. Each time, one bear was
present and the other bear was missing. For half the participants,
the girls bear was missing first and the other bear was missing
second; for the other participants, this order was reversed (i.e., the
other bear was missing first, and the girls bear was missing

105

second). Both times the girl saw one bear present and one missing,
children were asked how the girl felt, and responded using the
emotion scale. Here is the full script; text varying between conditions appears in brackets:
Look here is a girl and she is at the park. And look this is her teddy
bear. It belongs to her. She wants to go and play so she puts her teddy
bear on the bench.
And look! There is another teddy bear on the bench. This teddy bear
belongs to someone else. Which one is the girls bear? Now the girl
goes to play on the slide. She comes back and look! The [girls/other]
bear is gone! But the [other/girls] bear is there. How does the girl
feel? Now the girl goes to play on the swings and she comes back.
And look! The [other/girls] bear is gone! But the [girls/other] bear is
there. How does the girl feel? And look, the girl has her bear and she
is going home.

Two children initially responded incorrectly to the comprehension question asking which bear belonged to the girl. For both
children, the experimenter began the scenario anew, and both
children then passed this question.

Results
Children mostly responded using the scale, but occasionally
children responded verbally. Responses that the girl was happy
were scored 1 and sad responses were scored 1; neutral responses, and all other responses (e.g., I dont know, okay),
were scored 0. Each child received two scores one for their
response in the trial in which the girls bear was missing, and one
for their response when the other bear was missing. Scores were
entered into a 2 2 ANOVA with the trial type (i.e., girls bear
or other bear missing) as a within-subjects factor and trial order
(i.e., whether the girls bear was missing first or second) as a
between-subjects factor. This analysis found a main effect of
trial-type, F(1, 38) 15.23, p .001, 95% CI [0.37, 1.18], p2
.29; children indicated that the girl was sadder when her bear was
missing than when the other bear was missing. There was no effect
of trial-order, F(1, 38) 0.53, p .473, and no Trial Type Trial
Order interaction, F(1, 38) 1.92, p .174. Follow-up analyses
examined whether scores in each trial departed from the chance score
of 0. When the girls bear was missing (and the other bear present),
scores were lower than expected by chance (M score 0.30, SD
.88), t(39) 2.15, p .038, 95% CI [.58, .02], d 0.34. When
the other bear was missing (and the girls bear present), scores were
greater than expected by chance (M score 0.48, SD .78), t(39)
3.83, p .001, 95% CI [0.22, 0.73], d 0.62.

Discussion

Figure 1. Experiment 1. Emotion scale used in the training task.

Children identified the girl as happy when the other bear was
missing and her bear was present, but as sad in the reverse scenario.
It is somewhat surprising that children predicted the girl would be
happy when the bear belonging to another person was missing.
However, rather than reflecting an expectation that the girl enjoyed
someone elses misfortune, children may have based the prediction on
the girls relief that her own teddy bear was present. In addition,
although children were offered a neutral response option, they may
have been reluctant to use it (only 7 of the 40 children ever chose this
option). If many children limited themselves to only the happy and

PESOWSKI AND FRIEDMAN

106

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sad options, then they might have viewed the happy option as the
better fit when the girls bear was present.
Regardless, these findings demonstrate that 3-year-olds consider
ownership when predicting emotional reactions for overtly negative outcomes involving the potential loss of property. The next
experiments, however, examine whether children can predict emotions for more subtle negative events involving owned property.
They examine whether children predict that harmless violations of
ownership rights also lead to negative emotions. Because we
anticipated that younger children might have difficulty grasping
emotional reactions for harmless violations, the next experiment
included children from a broader range of ages.

Experiment 2
Method
Participants. Eighty-eight children participated: 32 3-yearolds (M 3;7; range 3;0 to 3;11; 10 females), 28 4-year-olds
(M 4;5; range 4;0 to 4;11; 15 females), and 28 5-year-olds
(M 5;6; range 5;0 to 5;11; 17 females). One additional
3-year-old was tested but was excluded from analysis because of
noncompliance.
Materials and procedure. Children were told two stories about
a boy and a girl. In both stories, the characters each had their own
object (teddy bears in Story 1, balls in Story 2). One character left the
room (girl in Story 1, boy in Story 2) and the other character then
played with one of the two objects. Children saw stories in which the
object belonged either to the character playing with it (user-owns
condition) or to the character who left the room (nonuser-owns
condition). These conditions varied in whether the character in the
room violated the ownership rights of the person who left.
After each scenario, children were asked a comprehension question confirming that they knew which character owned the object
being used. Then they were asked to predict how the character who
left the room would feel upon seeing the other character using the
object. Here is a sample script; text varying between conditions
appears in brackets:
Look, here is a boy and here is a teddy bear. This is the boys bear.
It belongs to him. And look its green just like the boys shirt. And
look, here is a girl and here is another teddy bear. This one is the girls
bear. It belongs to her. And look, its purple just like the girls shirt.
Now, the girl goes outside for a minute. And look, the boy is playing
with [her/his] bear. The girl is going to come back and I have some
questions: Whose bear is the boy playing with? How will the girl feel
when she sees the boy playing with [her/his] bear?

all other answers, including predictions that the character would feel
happy, and for responses not referring to predicted emotions (e.g., I dont
know). Childrens scores could range between 0 and 2; mean scores are
shown in Figure 2.
Of chief interest was whether children would be more likely to judge
that characters would be sad or mad when their ownership rights were
violated (nonuser-owns condition) than when this did not happen (userowns condition). To examine this, scores were entered into a 2 (condition:
user-owns, nonuser-owns) 3 (age: 3, 4, 5 years old) ANOVA. This
analysis yielded a main effect of condition, with children receiving higher
scores in the nonuser-owns than the user-owns condition, F(1, 82)
78.64, p .001, 95% CI [1.02, 1.61], p2 .49. There was no effect of
age, F(2, 82) 2.23, p .114, and no Age Condition interaction, F(2,
82) 0.384, p .682.

Discussion
Preschoolers judged that characters would feel more negatively
when their ownership rights were violated (i.e., another person
used their property without obtaining permission) than when this
did not happen. It is striking that preschoolers responded this way
because the ownership violations were essentially harmless (e.g.,
there was no indication that the property would be damaged or
permanently taken). Given 3- to 5-year-olds strong performance,
a final experiment investigated whether 2-year-olds also appreciate
the emotional consequences of such ownership violations.

Experiment 3
Method
Participants. Thirty-two 2-year-olds participated (M 2;7;
range 2;0 to 2;11; 19 females). Three additional children were
seen but were not tested because they failed the training task.
Materials and procedure. Children first completed a training
task to familiarize them with an emotion scale. It was a simplified
version of the scale used in Experiment 1, showing only the sad
and happy faces from that scale. The experimenter pointed at each
face and stated its emotion, always starting with the happy face.
Children were then asked to identify the face for both emotional
states. To be included in the experiment, children had to indicate
the appropriate faces.

Fourteen children (nine 3-year-olds and five 4-year-olds) gave incorrect responses to the comprehension question in at least one story. When
this happened, the experimenter began the scenario anew. Seven of these
children (four 3-year-olds and three 4-year-olds) also failed a second time,
in at least one story, and each time this happened, the experimenter
corrected the child and continued with the task.

Results
Children received a score of 1 each time they predicted the nonuser
would feel sad or mad; this score was also given for equivalent
emotion predictions (e.g., bad, not happy). Children were scored 0 for

Figure 2. Experiment 2. Mean times children predicted a negative emotional response.

OWNERSHIP AND EMOTIONS

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Children were next told two stories about a boy and a girl. In
each story, the characters stood side by side with an object between
them (teddy bear in Story 1, ball in Story 2). One character (boy in
Story 1, girl in Story 2) played with the object, and depending on
the condition to which children were randomly assigned, the object
either belonged to this character (user-owns condition) or to the
other character (nonuser-owns condition). After each scenario,
children were shown the emotion scale and were asked how the
other character (who did not play with the object) felt. Here is a
sample script; text varying between conditions appears in brackets:
Here is a boy. Here is a girl. And here is a teddy bear. Its the
[girls/boys] bear. It belongs to [her/him]. Whose teddy bear is it?
Look, the boy is playing with the [girls/his] bear. How will the girl
feel about that?

Six of the 2-year-olds gave incorrect responses to the comprehension question in at least one story. When this happened, the
experimenter began the scenario anew. Four of these children
failed a second time in at least one story, and each time this
happened, the experimenter corrected the child, and continued
with the task.

Results
Children received a score of 1 each time they predicted the
nonuser would be sad; this score was also assigned for a child who
said mad instead of responding using the scale. Children were
scored 0 for all other answers including predictions that the character would be happy and for nonresponses (maximum score 2).
As shown in Figure 3, scores were higher in the nonuser-owns
condition (M 1.31, SD .79) than in the user-owns condition
(M 0.75, SD .68), t(30) 2.15, p .040, 95% CI [0.03,
1.10], d 0.76.

Discussion
Children predicted that nonusers would feel more negatively
when the object belonged to them compared with when it belonged
to the user. This shows that 2-year-olds consider ownership when
predicting how people will react to uses of objects, and also

Figure 3. Experiment 3. Mean times 2-year-olds predicted a negative

emotional response.

107

recognize that people may feel negatively when others harmlessly

use their property.

General Discussion
In three experiments, we found that preschoolers and toddlers
understand basic causal relations between ownership and emotions. The first experiment found that 3-year-olds were sensitive to
ownership when predicting how a character would feel when an
object went missing. The children appreciated that an owner would
be more saddened by the disappearance of an object belonging to
her compared with the disappearance of someone elses property.
The second and third experiments found that preschoolers and
toddlers also consider ownership when predicting emotional reactions to more harmless events. For example, they predicted that a
girl would be more upset when a boy used her property (without
permission) compared with when he used his own property. This
finding is striking because the violation of ownership rights was
harmless and did not involve an overtly negative outcomethere
was no reason to expect that the girl would be deprived of her
property or that the boy would damage it.
These findings are informative in three regards. First, they show
that preschoolers and toddlers appreciate how ownership influences emotions. Although some previous studies showed that
children predict emotions when considering situations involving
owned property (e.g., Arsenio, 1988; Brody & Harrison, 1987),
none of these studies actually manipulated ownership and therefore do not show that children are sensitive to it. Likewise some
studies also found that children referred to ownership when explaining emotions (Fabes et al., 1991; Strayer, 1986), but they did
not report how often children provided such explanations. By
directly manipulating ownership, the present studies reveal that
children consider it when predicting how others will feel. Of
course, the present findings only represent a first step. Our findings
only suggest that children consider ownership in predicting happiness
and sadness; moreover, rather than considering these emotions per se,
children might instead have reasoned about whether events are likely
to result in positively valenced versus negatively valenced feelings.
Hence, future research could examine whether children consider
ownership in distinguishing between different negatively valenced
emotions (e.g., sadness vs. anger) and between different positively
valenced emotions (e.g., happiness vs. pride).
Second, the findings reveal that 2-year-olds understand the causes
of emotions and suggest that they are aware of other peoples ownership rights. Few previous studies show that 2-year-olds can predict
emotions (Wellman & Woolley, 1990), and no previous studies found
that 2-year-olds are sensitive to other peoples ownership rights.
Instead, studies on ownership rights only found that 2-year-olds are
aware of their own ownership rights (e.g., Rossano et al., 2011), with
understanding of others rights only appearing in children aged 3
years and older (e.g., Neary & Friedman, 2014; Rossano et al., 2011).
The finding that toddlers see relations between ownership and emotions may be informative about the origins of their appreciation of
ownership. Perhaps their understanding of other peoples ownership
rights depends on their ability to predict the emotional consequences
of violating these rights.
Third, the findings highlight the importance of ownership for
emotions, and extend understanding of how young children predict
emotions and understand their causes. As noted, existing theories

PESOWSKI AND FRIEDMAN

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108

have not posited that children consider ownership in predicting

emotions. Instead, theories claim that children either predict emotions by relying on scripts specifying which external events typically lead to certain emotions or by considering peoples mental
states (for overviews, see Harris, 2008, and Widen & Russell,
2008). The present findings may inform these accounts of how
young children predict emotions, because ownership may be used
to judge whether an event is positive or negative (script knowledge) and whether an individual desires the event (theory of mind).
Ownership may have these effects because it increases the personal relevance of events (e.g., Belk, 1991; Cunningham, Turk,
Macdonald, & Macrae, 2008). For example, if a girl sees a stranger
riding away on a bicycle, this will normally have little relevance
for her and little influence on how she feels. But if the stranger is
riding away on the girls bike, this will make the event both
negative and undesirable for the girl. Perhaps future research can
test how childrens reasoning about ownership influences their use
of scripts and theory of mind in predicting emotions.

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Received May 20, 2014

Revision received August 14, 2014
Accepted August 20, 2014