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Moral Foundations Questionnaire

MFQ-30
psychologysocial scienceshumanitiesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

A 30-item measure of the five moral foundations identified in Moral Foundations Theory: Care/Harm, Fairness/Reciprocity, Loyalty/Betrayal (Ingroup), Authority/Subversion (Respect), and Sanctity/Purity. The form uses two item types, relevance judgments (Part 1) and agreement with moral statements (Part 2), with three of each per foundation.

Items
30
Response format
6-point response scale (relevance: Not at all relevant → Extremely relevant; judgment: Strongly disagree → Strongly agree)
Version
1.0
Subscales
5

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Moral intuitions were assessed with the 30-item Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ-30; Graham et al., 2011), which measures five foundations (Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity), each with three relevance and three judgment items on a 6-point scale.

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Reliability & validation

Validation population
YourMorals.org volunteers (N = 34,476) and a University of Southern California student retest sample (N = 123) reported in Graham et al. (2011)
Cronbach's α
0.65–0.84

Subscales

Harm/CareFairness/ReciprocityIngroup/LoyaltyAuthority/RespectPurity/Sanctity

Response anchors

Not at all relevant / Strongly disagree · Not very relevant / Moderately disagree · Slightly relevant / Slightly disagree · Somewhat relevant / Slightly agree · Very relevant / Moderately agree · Extremely relevant / Strongly agree

Known limitations

Administer with two catch/validity items (one in each half) but exclude them from scoring; they are not included here. The five-factor structure has been debated; some analyses collapse the foundations into an Individualizing (Harm + Fairness) vs. Binding (Loyalty + Authority + Purity) dimension. The MFQ-30 is the most widely cited form; MFQ-2 (Atari et al., 2023) is the current successor with improved psychometrics.

Original 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.

https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847

Questions researchers ask

What does the MFQ-30 measure?

A 30-item measure of the five moral foundations identified in Moral Foundations Theory: Care/Harm, Fairness/Reciprocity, Loyalty/Betrayal (Ingroup), Authority/Subversion (Respect), and Sanctity/Purity. The form uses two item types, relevance judgments (Part 1) and agreement with moral statements (Part 2), with three of…

How many items does the MFQ-30 have?

The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ-30) has 30 items across 5 subscales: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, Purity/Sanctity.

Is the MFQ-30 free to use?

The MFQ-30 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the MFQ-30 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.65–0.84. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the MFQ-30, and how do I cite it?

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. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021847

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Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.