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Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children participated in a resource task with a peer-partner, where we established ownership by assigning children to one side or the other of an apparatus and by marking resources with colors to help children keep track of them. When retrieving resources in the partner's presence, the majority of children took their own things and respected what belonged to their partner. A proportion of children in all societies also respected ownership in their partner's absence, although the strength of respect varied considerably across societies. We discuss implications for the development of ownership concepts and possible explanations for societal differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating objects can increase our evaluation of them, even when we compare them to physically identical copies (IKEA effect). Here we evaluate the influence of collaboration on the IKEA effect in two societies--the United Kingdom and India. One hundred twenty-eight 5-to-6-year-old children (48% female, 50% British middle class, 50% Indian middle class) assembled toys in pairs. Half of the children collaborated to assemble a single toy and half assembled their own toy. In both societies, children demonstrated an IKEA effect (ηp² = .19), valuing their own creation over an identical copy. This was the case regardless of whether children collaborated or worked independently. In summary, it seems that the IKEA effect is a potent bias that is present in diverse societies and is insensitive to others' contributions in a collaborative environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]