Disentangling the sense of ownership from the sense of fairness. Commentary on Baumard, André and Sperber, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Both evolutionary and developmental research indicate that humans are adapted to respecting property rights, independently (and possibly orthogonally) to considerations of fairness. We offer evidence from psychological experiments suggesting that enforcing one’s rights and respecting others’ possessions is a basic cognitive mechanism, automatically activated and grounded in humans’ sensory-motor system. This may entail an independent motivation that is more profound than considerations of fairness and impartiality.