What moral foundations are
Moral foundations theory holds that people build their moral judgments on several distinct intuitions. The Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (Atari et al., 2023) measures six: Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity, with six statements each. It splits the original fairness foundation into equality of outcomes and rewards proportional to contribution.
Two people can agree on every fact and still disagree about what is right, because each weighs a different concern. The six foundations name those concerns, so a disagreement can be read as a difference in emphasis rather than as one side not caring about morality.
The six foundations
Care
About concern for people who are suffering and for kindness and compassion. Higher scorers treat compassion for people who are suffering as close to the centre of morality.
Equality
About fairness as equal outcomes — that resources and rewards should be shared evenly. Higher scorers see unequal outcomes, especially in money, as a moral problem in themselves.
Proportionality
About fairness as deserving — that rewards should match effort and contribution. Higher scorers want rewards to track effort and merit, and cheating to be caught.
Loyalty
About standing with your group — country, community, or team. Higher scorers treat loyalty to their country, community, or team as a moral duty.
Authority
About respect for tradition, elders, and legitimate leadership. Higher scorers value tradition, respect for elders and parents, and strong leadership as part of a good society.
Purity
About the sense that some things are sacred and that bodies and conduct can be degraded. Higher scorers feel that some things are sacred and that chastity and restraint matter morally.
Two kinds of fairness
The first questionnaire had one fairness foundation. The MFQ-2 splits it into Equality, fairness as equal outcomes, and Proportionality, fairness as rewards that match contribution. Across 19 countries the two correlated only .21 on average, so many people value one much more than the other.
Compared across 19 countries
Your scores are placed against 3,902 adults in nationally stratified samples from 19 countries, about 205 each (Atari et al., 2023, Study 2), pooled with equal weight, and against the range of the 19 national averages. Those averages differ a lot: Purity varied most with cultural distance from the United States (r = .43). The result never gives a percentile, because the paper reports means and standard deviations, not distributions.
Not a political label
Research finds that, on average, people who call themselves more liberal score higher on Care and Equality and those who call themselves more conservative higher on Loyalty, Authority, Purity, and Proportionality. Those are averages across many people. This test does not guess anyone's politics, religion, or country, and no foundation is the nobler one to score high on.
What is free and what the report adds
The two foundations you weigh most, the methodology, and the sources are free. The advanced report adds the other four foundations, your full order and which gaps are real, a reading of your two kinds of fairness, where your scores sit among 19 national averages, a 90-day practice, and an AI reflection module.