Am I a Good Person? Quiz: See How You Act on Honesty, Care and Repair
This Am I a Good Person? quiz looks at what you actually do, not at whether you are secretly bad. Twenty original statements give you a score across honesty and fairness, care and generosity, and taking responsibility and repair, with an optional PDF.
Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW 
Am I a Good Person? Quiz is a free, confidential 20-question self-assessment, original educational screener of moral behavior, not moral worth. It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language score across 4 interpretation bands plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Good is something you do, not a verdict you receive
Nobody can measure whether a person is good. What can be looked at is behavior: whether you tell the truth when a lie is easier, whether you notice and help, and whether you own and repair the harm you cause. This quiz scores those three areas. It is also written for the many people who search this question because of anxious doubt rather than any real wrongdoing, and it says so plainly.
Three areas of moral behavior
Honesty and fairness (truth-telling, keeping promises, treating people the same regardless of what they can do for you), care and generosity (noticing, helping, giving without return) and taking responsibility and repair (owning mistakes, apologizing without excuses, making things right). Based on the behaviors moral psychology links to a strong moral identity.
Behavior, not self-image
Twenty original statements about what you do, with seven worded toward the self-serving end and reverse-scored. The aim is to get past both the flattering self-image most people hold and the harsh one anxious people hold, and look at the record.
Written for the anxious searcher
The page explains moral scrupulosity, the difference between guilt and shame, and why persistent doubt about being a bad person is usually a sign of conscience rather than its absence. No result on this page calls anyone a bad person.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Scores behavior, not a good or bad verdict | Usually a verdict | Yes, three behavior areas |
| Addresses obsessive doubt about being bad | No | Yes, with scrupulosity explained |
| Separates guilt from shame | No | Yes, on the page |
| Reverse-scored items to catch yes-saying | Rarely | Yes, 7 of 20 items |
| Clinician-reviewed interpretation | Rarely | Yes, clinician reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often collected | Scored in your browser; only summary scores if you request a PDF or report |
How scoring works
Answers are scored 0–80 in total. Your result falls into one of 4 bands:
| Score | Band | What it suggests |
|---|---|---|
| 0–27 | Behavior has drifted from your values | Honesty, care and repair have not been showing up much in your behavior lately. That is a description of a stretch of time, not of who you are, and it is the kind of thing that changes when you decide it should. |
| 28–47 | A mixed record | Honesty, care and repair line up with your values in some areas and drift in others, and the breakdown probably shows exactly where. |
| 48–63 | Mostly in line with your values | Honesty, care and repair are regular parts of how you act, with one or two areas where your behavior still slips under pressure or when no one is watching. |
| 64–80 | Consistently in line with your values | Honesty, care and repair are consistent parts of how you act, including when it costs you and when no one would know. That is worth taking in, especially if you came here doubting it. |
How the quiz is scored
Each of the twenty statements is rated on a five-point agreement scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, scored 0 to 4. Six statements describe self-serving or defensive habits and are reverse-scored, so a higher total always means more of the behavior the research links to a strong moral identity. The total runs from 0 to 80, with three bars underneath: honesty and fairness (seven statements, up to 28), care and generosity (seven statements, up to 28) and taking responsibility and repair (six statements, up to 24). The grouping is our own educational structure, informed by moral psychology, not a validated set of subscales.
The four result bands are educational ranges at roughly even divisions of the scale, not clinical cutoffs, and none of them is called bad. There is no instrument that can establish a person's moral worth, and this page does not try. What it can do is show you where your behavior is already in line with your values and where it drifts, which is a far more useful question than the one that probably brought you here. Answer for the last few months, honestly, and remember that an anxious person will tend to under-rate themselves while a defensive person will over-rate; if you know which you are, correct a little in the other direction.
If you cannot stop asking whether you are a bad person
A large share of the people who search this question are not wondering idly. They are caught in a loop: an intrusive thought arrives, such as a violent image, a cruel impulse, a memory of something they did years ago, and it is followed by the question of what kind of person has thoughts like that. Reassurance helps for an hour and then the question comes back. Clinicians call this moral scrupulosity, and it is a recognized form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jonathan Abramowitz and Ryan Jacoby describe it as the pairing of unwanted intrusive thoughts about morality with an inflated sense of responsibility for them, so that having a bad thought feels equivalent to doing a bad thing. The checking, confessing, reviewing and reassurance-seeking that follow are compulsions, and like all compulsions they feed the doubt rather than settling it.
If that pattern sounds familiar, two things are worth knowing. First, intrusive thoughts are universal; nearly everyone has them, and their content says nothing about character. Second, the distress you feel about them is itself the evidence you keep looking for. Research on scrupulosity consistently finds that the people most tormented by whether they are bad are highly conscientious and morally invested, which is why the thoughts bother them in the first place. A quiz cannot resolve an obsessive doubt, and taking it repeatedly for reassurance is a compulsion in itself. What does help is treatment: exposure and response prevention has strong evidence for OCD, including the moral kind. Our OCD Test (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and Pure O OCD Test can help you see whether the pattern fits, and a therapist who treats OCD can help you step out of the loop.
Guilt after a mistake is not the same as shame
Most people who ask this question have something specific in mind: a lie, a betrayal, a cruel thing said, a time they did not help. The feeling that follows matters, because June Tangney's research draws a sharp line between two feelings that are easily confused. Guilt is about the act: I did a bad thing. It is uncomfortable, it focuses attention on the harm, and it reliably motivates apology, repair and doing better. Shame is about the self: I am a bad person. It feels worse, it makes people want to hide, and in Tangney's studies it was linked to defensiveness, blame-shifting and more of the behavior it was supposedly punishing, not less. Guilt-prone people, across study after study, show more empathy and more constructive repair. Shame-prone people often do not repair at all, because the self they would have to face feels unbearable.
So the question am I a bad person is, in a sense, the shame version of a question that has a more useful guilt version: what did I do, who did it affect, and what would repair look like? The third area of this quiz, taking responsibility and repair, is where that work shows up in behavior. If your score there is low, the practical steps are not mysterious: name the specific thing, say it to the person without excuses, ask what would help, and change the behavior. If shame is the loud feeling, and especially if it comes with a harsh inner voice that would never speak to anyone else that way, Self-Compassion Test looks at the pattern directly, and the research suggests self-compassion makes repair more likely, not less.
What to do with your result
If your total is low, look at the three bars before you look at the number. People with a low total almost always have one area that is fine and one that drags, and the one that drags usually has a reason: exhaustion that has eaten into care, a defensive habit that blocks repair, or a workplace or relationship where honesty felt unsafe. Pick the lowest bar and choose one behavior for it this week. For honesty, that might be correcting one small untruth you would usually let stand. For care, noticing one person who is struggling and doing one thing. For repair, one apology without a list of reasons attached. Behavior moves faster than self-image, and self-image follows it.
If your total is high, the useful question is whether the behaviors come from care or from fear of being seen as bad, because the two look similar from outside and feel very different from inside. If the second, the scrupulosity section above may be more relevant than the score. Either way, our Kindness Test looks more closely at kindness under strain and toward yourself, Moral Foundations Test shows which moral concerns weigh most for you, and Moral Alignment Test offers a lighter look at how you balance rules against outcomes. If a specific relationship is where the question lives, Am I the Problem? Relationship Self-Check looks at your part in it honestly. And if the doubt itself is the problem, the right next step is not another quiz; it is a conversation with a therapist who treats OCD and anxiety.
Methodology & sources
This is an original educational screener written for Psychology.com. The twenty statements are our own, informed by three strands of research: Karl Aquino and Americus Reed's work on moral identity and the behaviors associated with it; June Tangney's research distinguishing guilt from shame and their very different effects on repair; and the clinical literature on moral scrupulosity as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, including Abramowitz and Jacoby's cognitive-behavioral account. The statements are grouped into honesty and fairness, care and generosity, and taking responsibility and repair. That grouping is ours; it is not a validated factor structure, and the three bars should be read as an educational map rather than as subscales with known reliability.
Each statement is rated on a five-point agreement scale scored 0 to 4. Six statements are worded toward the self-serving or defensive end and reverse-scored, so a higher total always means more of the behavior described. The result bands are educational ranges at roughly even divisions of the 0 to 80 scale, not clinical cutoffs, and no band labels anyone a bad person, because no instrument can measure moral worth. The screener has not been validated against a published instrument and should not be compared with research measures of moral identity or prosocial behavior.
This page is provided for education and self-reflection. It cannot tell you whether you have obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression or any other condition. Persistent, distressing doubt about being a bad person, especially when it follows intrusive thoughts and is relieved only briefly by reassurance, is a pattern that responds to treatment, and a licensed therapist who works with OCD and anxiety is the right person to talk to about it.
References
- Aquino K, Reed A II. The self-importance of moral identity. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2002;83(6):1423-1440. doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.83.6.1423
- Tangney JP, Stuewig J, Mashek DJ. Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annu Rev Psychol. 2007;58:345-372. doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070145
- Abramowitz JS, Jacoby RJ. Scrupulosity: A cognitive-behavioral analysis and implications for treatment. J Obsessive Compuls Relat Disord. 2014;3(2):140-149. doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2013.12.007
- Graham J, Haidt J, Nosek BA. Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2009;96(5):1029-1046. doi.org/10.1037/a0015141
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, October 5). Am I a Good Person? Quiz. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/good-person
Am I a Good Person? Quiz FAQ
Can a quiz tell me whether I am a good person?
No, and this one does not claim to. No instrument can measure moral worth. What this quiz does is look at moral behavior in three areas: honesty and fairness, care and generosity, and taking responsibility and repair. The result shows where your behavior already matches your values and where it drifts, which is a more useful question than the one most people arrive with.
I keep worrying that I am secretly a bad person. What does that mean?
Usually it means the opposite of what you fear. Persistent, distressing doubt about being bad, especially when it follows intrusive thoughts and is relieved only briefly by reassurance, is the pattern clinicians call moral scrupulosity, a form of OCD. The people it affects are typically highly conscientious, which is why the thoughts bother them. Our OCD Test and Pure O Test can help you see whether the pattern fits, and it responds well to treatment.
I did something I am ashamed of. Does that make me a bad person?
A bad act does not make a bad person, and the research on guilt and shame suggests that framing matters. Guilt, which focuses on the act, reliably leads to apology and repair. Shame, which focuses on the self, tends to lead to hiding and defensiveness. The useful questions are what you did, who it affected and what repair would look like. If a harsh inner voice is the loudest part, our Self-Compassion Test looks at that directly.
What is a good score?
On this 0 to 80 scale, 64 and above suggests moral behavior that is consistent across all three areas, 48 to 63 mostly consistent with some drift, 28 to 47 a mixed record, and 27 or below behavior that has drifted a long way from your values recently. These are educational ranges, not cutoffs, and none of them is a verdict. The three bars matter more than the total.
Why does the quiz ask about apologizing and repair?
Because the research suggests that how people handle their own mistakes is one of the clearest markers of moral character in practice. Everyone causes harm sometimes. Owning it without excuses, asking what would help, and changing the behavior is what separates a mistake from a pattern. Our Am I the Problem? self-check looks at this inside a specific relationship.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser. Your individual answers are scored in your browser and are never sent to us or linked to you. They stay in this tab so you can return to your result, and closing or clearing the tab clears them. If you ask us to email the PDF, we receive your summary scores with your email address, never your individual answers. No account is needed.
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