Unsolicited but acceptable: Non-owners can access property if the owner benefits.

People are normally restricted from accessing property without permission the owner. The principle that nonowners excluded is central to theories of ownership, and previous findings suggest it could be a core feature psychology ownership. However, we report six experiments on children (N = 480) adults 211) showing this may not apply for actions benefit owner-actions like repairing broken property. In Experiment 1, 3-5-year-olds judged more acceptable nonowner repair than move it. Experiments 2 3 replicated with 4-6-year-olds using different question wordings showed also approve replacing 4 these replicate regardless whether owner acquainted. Finally, 5 6 revealed boundary condition approval unsolicited beneficial actions: Both modifying suit owner's preferences. These restrictions less absolute often claimed, participants' judgments depended generic information about which typically beneficial, rather consideration owners' specific (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).