Possessed ― Why We Want More Than We Need

Ownership is on most people's lips these days, or at least the lack of ownership. Everywhere people seem to be fighting over what is theirs. They want to take back their property, their lands, their liberty, their bodies, their identity, and their right to do what they want. These demands are quite remarkable when you consider that ownership is not an observable property but rather an abstract concept. And yet this abstract concept controls just about everything we do, and rarely do we stop to consider how it rules our lives. Ownership even explains the anger and political turmoil that is currently sweeping over Western democracies: people feel they have had something taken away, something they used to own in the past and want back.

Possessed is the first accessible book to consider the psychological origins and future of ownership in a rapidly changing world. It reveals how we are compelled to accumulate possessions in a relentless drive to seek status and approval by signalling our values to others by what we own. It traces the history of ownership but looks to the future as our drive to own will need to adapt to environmental and technological change.

Bruce Hood is Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University. He undertook his Ph.D. at Cambridge followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He researches child development, origins of superstition and self-identity. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Psychological Society. Bruce gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 2011 and has written three popular science books - SuperSense, The Self Illusion and The Domesticated Brain. He is working on his fourth book about ownership. Bruce is the founder of Speakezee - the world's largest academic speaker platform connecting experts with audiences.