Moral Foundations Questionnaire

What it measures

Measures the degree to which individuals rely on five moral foundations in their moral judgements. Liberalism is associated with higher Care and Fairness; conservatism with additional use of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity. Widely used in moral psychology, political psychology, and cross-cultural ethics research.

Response format

Two sections: relevance ratings (0=not at all relevant to 5=extremely relevant) and agreement ratings (1=strongly disagree to 6=strongly agree); subscale means

Representative items

• Whether or not someone suffered emotionally. (Care/Harm relevance)
• Whether or not someone was cruel. (Care/Harm relevance)
• Whether or not someone acted unfairly. (Fairness/Reciprocity relevance)
• Whether or not someone betrayed his or her group. (Loyalty relevance)
• Chastity is an important and valuable virtue. (Sanctity/Purity agreement)

Usage notes & scoring

Freely available at moralfoundations.org. Five subscale mean scores are the primary output. Widely used in political psychology to explain ideological differences in moral reasoning. MFQ-30 is the current standard; a revised Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ2) is under development.

Recommended companion scales

Citation

Graham, J., Nosek, B.A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P.H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366–385.

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