“Ours”: Understanding Collective Psychological Ownership

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in collective psychology ownership in different disciplines. However, and in contrast to a feeling of personal ownership (“mine”), the theoretical thinking about a sense of collective ownership (“ours”) is limited. This article proposes that the social identity perspective (social identity theory and self-categorization theory) provides a coherent framework for understanding and examining collective psychological ownership toward various targets of ownership and in a range of settings. It is argued that research on collective ownership will be enhanced by more fully considering the implications of this perspective, which include (a) the importance of the group self and self-stereotyping, (b) developing ingroup consensus and shared understandings, (c) the role of sociotropic threat and group identification, and (d) the importance of the sociocultural context. These implications have not been fully considered in the literature but indicate that the social identity perspective offers the possibility for theoretically integrating and empirically examining collective psychological ownership.