Self-Ownership And Memory

Samantha Callahan, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Danielle Patrick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Sara Roderick, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University; Kahla Stygar, Department of Psychology, Lindenwood University.

There are many interpretations on what it means to own something. Some people see owning things as a way to show off how much they’re worth. Other people may see owning things as having a capability that other people do not have, like a special gift or skill that makes them unique. Owning something means being able to call it yours. Whether it’s tangible or intangible items, ownership affects your sense of

How is memory encoded and what methods can lead to greater recall? There have been many different models suggested for human memory and many different attempts at defining a specific method of encoding that will lead to greater recall. In this experiment subjects are asked to do a semantic task on a word related to them and an orthographic task in which they analyze the letter in the word. The results of the experiment indicate that the words which where encoded semantically and are related to the self have greater recall.

Anywhere in the world, someone acquires something, whether it be money, a car, or even an idea. We can “own” many intangible and tangible items in life, but how does ownership relate to a sense and development of self? This question has been constantly answered for centuries through intelligent people like Plato, Aristotle, and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, the question has received no agreeable answer. In the end, people will agree that there is a strong and positive relationship between ownership and a sense of self because the things you own will define and develop who you are positively by exhibiting what you like, what you can and cannot do, and in the end, characterizes you, as long as you use the things you own properly.

Anywhere in the world, someone acquires something, whether it be money, a car, or even an idea. We can “own” many intangible and tangible items in life, but how does ownership relate to a sense of self? This question has been constantly answered for centuries through intelligent people like Plato, Aristotle, and Jean-Paul Sartre. However, the question has received no agreeable answer. In the end, people will agree that there is a strong and positive relationship between ownership and a sense of self because the things you own will define and develop who you are positively by exhibiting what you like, what you can and cannot do, and in the end, characterizes you, as long as you use the items you own properly.

The experiment included a total of 151 participants (42 male; 109 female), all of which are enrolled in a Griffith University second year Psychology course.

The idea of self is a significant part of every individual’s life. The way we visualise ourselves can be altered by feelings of self worth and self esteem and lead to a change or influence in the way we act. The evaluation of one’s attitude towards self can be seen to be improved by the individual believing they are worthy which could lead to a self fulfilling prophecy. The better-than-average effect can depict this theory by assessing individuals on their motivational bias and attributes (Brown, 2011). In this particular study, participants are given a questionnaire regarding ten traits, half of high importance and half of low importance. They were then told to rate these attributes on importance of possession. As predicted, the results show that the

Numerous research studies have been conducted in the past investigating the idea of how different stimuli are associated with each other in the brain. In specific, research has been conducted showing a relationship between priming techniques and their association on response times. Today, one question being asked is how is the idea of the mental lexicon involved with recognition of stimuli. The mental lexicon is used as a way of storing information that is associated with each other. The study we conducted aimed to further investigate the idea of a mental lexicon or the organization of words based on how they relate

John-Paul Sartre's idea of owning the self is very interesting. He is basically proposing that skills, knowledge, and traits are the requirements for owning the self. I agree with is theory over all the others because it means more to me by knowing and doing it rather than just buying it. Money does not just buy your experience and skills. I have three skills that I feel like are extremely important in today's worlds in order to own the self. I find myself as hard working, good with horses, and a superior hunter.

To most people in society, the “self” that defines a person is created through the experiences that one goes through in life. According to Dan Levitin in his article, “Amnesia and the Self That Remains When Memory Is Lost”, he explains that a part of the self still exists even if the memories fade.

A person’s recognition memory indicates the ability to recognise something they have seen before when you show it to them. Therefore its been suggested that objects are ascribed more value because people simply own them (mere ownership effect). Previous research has shown that our memory is better for objects we own compared to those of a stranger. Thus the importance of the self-relevance effect shows the tendency for individuals to have better memory for information that relates to oneself in comparison to material that has less personal relevance. Our experiment has stemmed from an accumulation of prior literature and has been based off a study by Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald and Macrae (2008), which was designed to test ownership on memory performance. The participant’s sorted cards into two baskets, by matching the colour of the sticker to the relevant basket. The experimenter held up the cards individually, named the item pictured on the card, then handed it to the relevant participant to put in the correct basket. A surprise recognition memory test of the item required participants to determine whether the item had previously been seen or was new and

What does it mean to you when you own something? Is it the gratification that makes it rewarding? Or is it the cost and struggle it took to buy it? Or how about what others think about your object? Ownership and sense of self comes together as a perception of how we see ourself being an owner.

The famous rubber hand illusion, is a good example of how we attribute body ownership over innate objects. In the rubber hand illusion (Botvinick & Cohen, 1998), participants watching a rubber hand being stroked synchronously with one’s own unseen hand causes the rubber hand to ‘‘feel like it’s my hand’’. A sense of ownership arises due to the matching visual and tactile stimulation. Because the subject takes the viewed rubber hand as their own hand, one consequence of the illusion is that the viewed location of the rubber hand adapts the proprioceptive perceived location of the subject’s own

Organism used the sense of self to distinguish itself from the immediate external environment (Neisser, 1988). The idea of ‘extended self’ suggested that the self was not limited to the body but also incorporate with self-relevant information (Kim & Johnson 2012). The self-object associations was developed as far back as early childhood, which showed that ownership was important in cognition (Cunningham, Turk, Macdonald, & Macrae, 2008). Three research have investigated the association between ownership and cognition.

Self concepts begins in childhood but it continues to develop throughout life. As we observe how other people react to us, we modify our “self.” The “self” is never a finished project, and it continues to change as our life takes different turns. Our “self” reacts to the environment that we are in.