Moral Foundations Test: See Which Six Values Drive Your Sense of Right and Wrong
This self-assessment is informed by Moral Foundations Theory, the research on why people across the political and cultural spectrum weigh right and wrong so differently. See your full profile across all six foundations, not just a single label.
Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW 
Moral Foundations Test is a free, confidential 36-question self-assessment, informed by Moral Foundations Theory (MFQ-2). It takes about 6 minutes, runs entirely in your browser, and gives you a plain-language profile of your strongest style plus an optional in-depth report. It is an educational screening, not a diagnosis.
Six foundations, one honest profile
Moral Foundations Theory holds that human morality rests on several distinct intuitions, not one. This test scores all six so you see your full pattern, plus which two foundations weigh heaviest in how you judge right and wrong.
Your full moral profile
Where you land on all six foundations from Moral Foundations Theory: Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity, shown as a complete set of bars rather than one score.
Your two leading foundations
Most people lean on a couple of foundations more than the rest. Seeing your top two, together, explains far more about your moral reasoning than any single label.
Why good people disagree
A plain-language read on what each foundation protects and how differences in weighting, not a difference in how moral someone is, drive much of everyday political and ethical disagreement.
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Psychology.com |
|---|---|---|
| Scores all six foundations, not one label | Often one score | Yes, full profile as bars |
| Uses the current MFQ-2 six-foundation model | Often the older five | Yes, Equality and Proportionality split |
| Original items, no reproduced questionnaire content | Often unclear | Yes, 36 original items |
| Explains disagreement without partisan labels | Rarely | Yes, framed as reasoning styles |
| Clinician-reviewed language | Rarely | Yes, editorially reviewed |
| Optional in-depth personalized report | No | Yes, written to your exact scores |
| Answers stay on your device | Often tracked | Scored in your browser; we only receive anonymous completion counts unless you ask for a PDF or report |
The 6 patterns this test measures
- Care: Protects against harm and suffering.
- Equality: Protects equal treatment and guards against domination.
- Proportionality: Protects the link between what you put in and what you get out.
- Loyalty: Protects group cohesion and shared identity.
- Authority: Protects social order, roles, and legitimate hierarchy.
- Purity: Protects sanctity and guards against degradation.
If nothing is endorsed, every pattern scores the same, or the leading patterns tie, the result says so instead of naming a single pattern.
Where Moral Foundations Theory comes from
Moral Foundations Theory was developed by social psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, and colleagues to explain a puzzle: people across cultures and political positions consistently disagree about right and wrong, and the disagreement is not simply that one side is more moral than the other. The theory proposes that human moral judgment draws on a small set of evolved intuitions, originally identified as Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity, with Liberty added later by some researchers. In 2023, a large validation study led by Mohammad Atari and Jonathan Haidt found that the original Fairness foundation actually behaves as two separable intuitions, Equality and Proportionality, and introduced the revised MFQ-2 questionnaire to measure all six. This test follows that six-foundation structure.
The Moral Foundations Questionnaire and MFQ-2 are validated research instruments, and they are made freely available for academic and educational use, but their exact items are not reproduced on this page. Instead, we wrote 36 original statements, six for each foundation, informed by the same underlying theory and the published factor structure. We are explicit about that distinction throughout: this is an educational tool informed by Moral Foundations Theory, not the MFQ-2 itself.
Why your two leading foundations matter more than one number
Almost nobody scores high on exactly one foundation and low on the rest. Most people's moral reasoning is a blend, usually led by two foundations that work together, sometimes in tension. Someone who leads with Care and Equality often reasons in ways researchers associate with progressive or humanitarian ethics: minimizing harm and leveling unearned advantage. Someone who leads with Loyalty, Authority, and Purity often reasons in ways associated with more traditional or conservative ethics: protecting group cohesion, respecting established structure, and guarding what feels sacred. Neither pattern is more moral than the other; they are different, evolved answers to the question of how a group of people can live together well.
That is why this test shows your full six-bar profile rather than crowning a single winner. Your top bar names your strongest foundation, and your second-highest bar, right below it, is doing nearly as much work in how you actually judge situations day to day. Reading both together, rather than fixating on the label at the top, gives a far more honest picture of your moral reasoning.
Using this to understand disagreement, not win it
The most practical use of Moral Foundations Theory is not sorting people into camps; it's translating across them. When a disagreement about a policy, a family decision, or a workplace call feels stuck, it is often because the two sides are weighing different foundations rather than reasoning from different facts. A disagreement that looks like one person just doesn't care and the other doesn't respect rules often resolves faster once both people can name that they are actually prioritizing Care versus Authority, or Equality versus Proportionality, and neither instinct is illegitimate.
This test deliberately avoids mapping foundations onto political parties or using ideological language anywhere in your results, because the research is about underlying moral intuitions, not partisan identity, and individuals of every political stripe show real variation. If you want to go deeper on how your specific values show up day to day, our Personal Values Test looks at concrete priorities rather than moral intuitions, and our Empathy Test looks specifically at the Care-adjacent capacity to sense and respond to others' feelings.
Methodology & sources
This test is informed by Moral Foundations Theory as developed by Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, and colleagues, and specifically by the six-foundation structure introduced in the 2023 MFQ-2 revision: Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. We wrote 36 original statements, six per foundation, covering the intuitions and reactions the published research associates with each one. None of the items are drawn from the Moral Foundations Questionnaire or MFQ-2 itself; those instruments remain available through the original researchers for academic use, and we cite them below rather than reproduce them.
Each statement is rated on a five-point agreement scale from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree, and the engine sums your score within each foundation to build your profile. We deliberately show all six bars rather than a single dominant type, because the research is clear that most people's moral reasoning is a blend, and because no foundation is framed here as better or worse than another. This is an educational self-assessment for reflection, not the validated MFQ-2, and not a measure of how moral or ethical someone is overall.
It is worth being direct about the limits of this research too. The five-factor structure behind the original MFQ has repeatedly failed to replicate cleanly outside Western samples: a 27-country study found it did not hold together the same way across cultures (Iurino and Saucier, 2020), an independent reanalysis found the data fit a three-factor structure better than the original five (Harper and Rhodes, 2021), and a study in Ghana found the Purity foundation specifically behaved inconsistently outside a Western sample (Winkelkotte et al., 2025). The MFQ-2 used here is the researchers' own response to problems like these, and it is a genuine improvement, but the underlying debate about how many foundations there really are, and how consistently they hold across cultures, is not settled. Treat your six bars as an honest description of how you answered 36 statements on one particular day, not as a cross-culturally comparable measurement of your morality.
References
- Graham J, Nosek BA, Haidt J, Iyer R, Koleva S, Ditto PH. Mapping the moral domain. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011;101(2):366-385. doi.org/10.1037/a0021847
- Atari M, Haidt J, Graham J, Koleva S, Stevens ST, Dehghani M. Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2023;125(5):1157-1188. doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000470
- Iurino K, Saucier G. Testing measurement invariance of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire across 27 countries. Assessment. 2020;27(2):365-372. doi.org/10.1177/1073191118817916
- Harper CA, Rhodes D. Reanalysing the factor structure of the moral foundations questionnaire. Br J Soc Psychol. 2021;60(4):1303-1329. doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12452
- Winkelkotte F, Fobi D, Möhring M, Wild S. Testing psychometrics of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (MFQ-2) among pre-service teachers in Ghana. Curr Psychol. 2025;44(8):6746-6759. doi.org/10.1007/s12144-025-07630-4
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, September 23). Moral Foundations Test. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tests/moral-foundations
Moral Foundations Test FAQ
What is Moral Foundations Theory?
It is a framework from social psychology proposing that human moral judgment rests on several distinct intuitions rather than one. The current version, from the 2023 MFQ-2 revision, names six: Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. People and cultures differ in how heavily they weigh each one, which the theory argues explains much of everyday moral and political disagreement.
Is this the official MFQ or MFQ-2?
No. The Moral Foundations Questionnaire and its MFQ-2 revision are validated research instruments made available by their original researchers for academic use. This test is informed by that theory and its six-foundation structure, but uses 36 original statements we wrote ourselves rather than reproducing the questionnaire's items.
Is one moral foundation better than the others?
No. Each foundation evolved to solve a real problem of living together in groups, from protecting the vulnerable to maintaining cooperation and order. The research treats differences in weighting as different, legitimate moral styles, not as some people being more or less moral than others. This test is written the same way.
Does my result say anything about my politics?
Research has found broad patterns linking certain foundation profiles to political leanings, but this test does not label, score, or mention political affiliation anywhere in your result. Individuals of every political position show real variation, and a moral-foundations profile describes reasoning style, not a party.
How is this different from a values test or the Moral Alignment Test?
A values test, like our <a href="/tests/values">Personal Values Test</a>, asks what you prioritize day to day, such as achievement or security, and this test asks about the deeper intuitions that shape whether you judge something right or wrong in the first place. Our <a href="/tests/moral-alignment">Moral Alignment Test</a> is different again: it uses the tabletop-game Lawful-Chaotic, Good-Self-interested grid as a fun, informal frame, not a research instrument. This test is grounded specifically in the peer-reviewed Moral Foundations Theory research. Many people enjoy taking all three.
Is the test really confidential?
Yes. The test runs and is scored in your browser, and your individual answers are never sent to us. We count completions anonymously, and if you request the free PDF or a report we receive your summary scores with the email you give us, never your answers. No account is needed.
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