2011 August : 101(2): 366–385 | Jesse Graham, University of Virginia; Brian A. Nosek, University of Virginia; Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia; Ravi Iyer, University of Southern California; Spassena Koleva, University of California, Irvine; Peter H. Ditto, University of California, Irvine
The article "Mapping the Moral Domain" by Jesse Graham, Brian A. Nosek, Jonathan Haidt, Ravi Iyer, Spassena Koleva, and Peter H. Ditto, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, addresses the need for a broader and more theoretically grounded measurement of moral concerns. The authors developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) based on a theoretical model of five universally available sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. They present evidence for the internal and external validity of the scale and the model, highlighting new findings about morality. Key findings include:
1. **Model Fit**: Confirmatory factor analyses provide empirical justification for a five-factor structure of moral concerns.
2. **Convergent/Discriminant Validity**: Moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant.
3. **Pragmatic Validity**: The measure provides new insights into demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions.
The authors argue that Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) expands the scope of psychological views of morality by increasing its range and sharpening its resolution. They discuss the limitations of traditional morality scales, which often focus on individual-based concerns of harm and fairness, and propose a broader definition of the moral domain that includes group-level and cultural concerns. The MFQ is designed to measure these broader moral concerns, providing a tool for researchers to explore moral diversity and cultural variations in moral psychology.The article "Mapping the Moral Domain" by Jesse Graham, Brian A. Nosek, Jonathan Haidt, Ravi Iyer, Spassena Koleva, and Peter H. Ditto, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, addresses the need for a broader and more theoretically grounded measurement of moral concerns. The authors developed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) based on a theoretical model of five universally available sets of moral intuitions: Harm/care, Fairness/reciprocity, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity. They present evidence for the internal and external validity of the scale and the model, highlighting new findings about morality. Key findings include:
1. **Model Fit**: Confirmatory factor analyses provide empirical justification for a five-factor structure of moral concerns.
2. **Convergent/Discriminant Validity**: Moral concerns predict personality features and social group attitudes not previously considered morally relevant.
3. **Pragmatic Validity**: The measure provides new insights into demographic and cultural differences in moral intuitions.
The authors argue that Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) expands the scope of psychological views of morality by increasing its range and sharpening its resolution. They discuss the limitations of traditional morality scales, which often focus on individual-based concerns of harm and fairness, and propose a broader definition of the moral domain that includes group-level and cultural concerns. The MFQ is designed to measure these broader moral concerns, providing a tool for researchers to explore moral diversity and cultural variations in moral psychology.