How the concept of ownership influences human interactions with objects and other people

Ownership is a socio-cultural construct pervasive in everyday life, from
buying and selling to borrowing and lending. Humans can even feel a
sense of ownership over things that they do not legally own, such as
their chair at work. Understanding the nuances of ownership relations,
legal or psychological, is integral to maintaining a harmonious social
environment. Here I will present a synthesis of my motion capture
research concerning how the concept of ownership modulates human
interaction with objects that have ownership status. I will also explore
how such an embodiment of the concept of ownership influences joint
action. Supplementary reaction time and judgement based
experiments will also be presented. Overall, the synthesized data
suggests that concept of ownership is instated in the motor system and
it influences individual and joint actions in both self-oriented and
other-oriented fashions.