All scales

Moral Foundations Questionnaire

MFQ-30
psychologysocial scienceshumanitiesFree for research use

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) — 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.

Reliability & validation

Validation population
Large-N online samples (yourmorals.org) and MTurk samples 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 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 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 Individualising (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) — three of ea…

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

Use MFQ-30 in Folio Surveyor

Add it to a study with the full items, scoring, and analysis built in.

Open Surveyor
Save MFQ-30
Or track new research mentioning MFQ-30 as it publishes

Related scales

AMS-C 28Academic Motivation Scale — College VersionAHSAdult Dispositional Hope ScaleBSMASBergen Social Media Addiction ScaleBFI-44Big Five InventoryBFI-2Big Five Inventory-2BSCSBrief Self-Control Scale

Library entry verified January 2024. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.