Özer, Yağmur Irmak (2025) The psychology of possession: main effect of task involvement and moderating effect of self-construal. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Psychological ownership (PO), the feeling that something is ours, drives behaviors such as knowledge sharing, organizational citizenship behaviors, and creativity in organizational contexts. While prior research highlights knowledge, control, and investment of self to an object as a key antecedent of PO, the moderating role of cultural factors like self-construal remains underexplored. This study investigates how task involvement influences PO and examines self-construal as a potential moderator in this relationship. It was hypothesized that PO would differ significantly across task involvement levels, with the writer group exhibiting the highest PO, followed by developmental editors, copy editors, and proofreaders, mimicking the book publishing process. Additionally, self-construal was expected to moderate this relationship, with no significant group differences among those primed for individualistic self- construal. A 2x4 factorial ANOVA design was employed with 141 participants randomly assigned to four hierarchical task involvement conditions. Results supported the hypothesis that task involvement significantly affects PO, with partial support for the hierarchical pattern among task groups. However, self-construal did not moderate the task involvement-PO relationship, rejecting related hypotheses. These findings emphasize the direct influence of task involvement on PO, contributing to the theoretical understanding of PO’s antecedents. Practical implications suggest that organizations can foster PO by designing tasks that enhance benefits of PO while mitigating the negative consequences. The study’s limitations, including the online nature of the tasks and potential effects of AI use, provide avenues for future research on task design and individual differences in shaping PO. Keywords: psychological ownership, routes to pscychological ownership, knowledge, investment, control, self-construal.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Rietzschel, E.F. and Weigelt, O. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Work, Organizational and Personnel Psychology (WOP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Jan 2025 08:40 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Jan 2025 08:40 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4545 |
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