Morality Measured

Matt London (2018)

• Moral intuition has been the outcome variable of many studies seeking to determine the
moral tendencies of different political parties (Graham et al., 2009; Jost & Amodio, 2012).
• The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ30; Graham et al., 2008) was developed by a
collaboration of social psychologists, specializing in morality and politics. Their profiles are
located on their website YourMorals.Org.
• The Moral Foundations Theory is the basis for the MFQ30 (YourMorals.Org, 2018). The
theory describes five innate and universal Foundations of “intuitive ethics”:
1. Care/Harm, 2. Fairness/Cheating,
3. Loyalty/Betrayal, 4. Authority/Subversion, 5. Sanctity/Degradation
• Progressivism is “the relative dominance of individualizing moral intuitions over binding
moral intuitions” (Graham et al., 2008). It is quantified as the mean of Foundations 1 and 2
minus the mean of Foundations 3, 4, 5.
• Lewis R.J., Assistant Professor at University of Texas at Austin (UTA), uploaded data from
MFQ30 questionnaires completed online by student participants at UTA. Although, results
have not been published.
• Here, I disclose my analysis and results of the MFQ30 data
 6.00 6.00
MFQ30 Mean Score
5.00 5.00

MFQ30 Mean Score

4.00 4.00
3.00 3.00
2.00 2.00
1.00 1.00
0.00 0.00
Harm Fairness Ingroup Authority Purity
Subscales of MFQ30 whose scores indicate Subscales of MFQ30 whose scores indicate disapproval
support of moral behavior of immoral behavior
Statistical computation with Minitab 18 revealed no significant
difference between moral subscales (t(340)=-0.33, p=0.74). 6.00

MFQ30 Mean Score

One-Way Anova revealed a significant difference between 5.00
Immoral subscales (F(2,510)=7.05, p=0.001). A Tukey post-hoc 4.00
revealed Purity to significantly differ from Authority at p<.001.
3.00
This suggests the student subjects have a slightly stronger
opposition to impure behavior, as opposed to defiance of 2.00
authority. 1.00
Overall, with the wide-ranged standard deviation of 0.00
Progressivism suggests this test to be unreliable. Further Progressivism
analysis of standard deviations within and between subscales
Mean of Harm and Fairness – Mean of Ingroup Authority and Purity
is required for a stronger conclusion.
 References
YourMorals.Org Collaboration (2018, February 21). MoralFoundations.org. Retrieved from
http://moralfoundations.org/
Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations.
Journal of personality and social psychology, 96(5), 1029.
Jost, J. T., & Amodio, D. M. (2012). Political ideology as motivated social cognition: Behavioral and neuroscientific
evidence. Motivation and Emotion, 36(1), 55-64.