Separating the effects of preference from ownership in hand-object interactions.

Recently, the concept of ownership over objects has received a burst of attention within the cognitive domain.
The role of preference – specifically, choosing one object over another – however, has not been addressed. That
is, simply owning an object results in a preference for that object (‘mere-ownership’ effect, Beggan, 1992). As a
result, research purporting to demonstrate ownership-related effects in attention, memory, and kinematics may, in
fact, simply reflect on preference. Here I present two studies demonstrating kinematic patterns associated with
preference for and ownership over three different mugs during a natural lift. I report on three critical measures
of interest taken during upward movement: rightward drift, towards-body drift, and peak acceleration. When the
three mugs differed in terms of ownership we observed a greater rightward drift associated with the experimenter’s
mug compared with the participant’s and the unowned mug. We also observed the greatest towards-body drift and
peak acceleration when participants lifted their own mugs. When the three mugs differed in terms of preference,
but not in ownership, only the effect in towards-body drift remained . These results suggest that preference can
account for some of the previously reported kinematic patterns associated with ownership but there are distinct
patterns linked exclusively with ownership.