It's Probably Mine: Self‐Prioritization Can Be a Decisional Strategy

Marius Golubickis et al.

Cognitive Science2026https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70190article
AJG 3
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

Personal possession exerts a significant influence on decision-making, such that stimulus classification is speeded when objects belong to the self (vs. other persons). Exactly when and how this self-prioritization effect arises, however, remains a matter of speculation and debate. Accordingly, adopting a psychophysical approach in combination with computational modeling, here we hypothesized that self-prioritization could derive from the application of an egocentric strategy (i.e., default-to-self response) during decisional processing. Using a modified object-classification task in which participants judged blended images comprising varying amounts of self-owned and friend-owned objects (i.e., pencils and pens), the results of two experiments supported this viewpoint. Participants perceptually prioritized their possessions only when a self-centric decisional strategy was applicable (Experiment 1), an effect that was amplified when the demands of decision-making increased (Experiment 2). Additional computational analyses traced the origin of self-prioritization to a prestimulus preference for self-related responses, a strategic component of decision-making. Collectively, these findings inform understanding of how ownership influences decisional processing, with wider implications for theoretical accounts of self-bias.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70190

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@article{marius2026,
  title        = {{It's Probably Mine: Self‐Prioritization Can Be a Decisional Strategy}},
  author       = {Marius Golubickis et al.},
  journal      = {Cognitive Science},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70190},
}

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It's Probably Mine: Self‐Prioritization Can Be a Decisional Strategy

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.