If you go to this site, you can take what I’m told is Jon Haidt’s “Moral Foundations” test: a series of 36 questions telling you how people behaved in “moral dilemma” situations and then asking you to decide whether that behavior was good or bad (there are three degrees of goodness and of badness). Some of the questions you’ll be familiar with if you’ve read Haidt’s work, e.g: someone cleans her toilet with an American flag. Is that good or bad, and to what degree?
I took the test, and here are my results:
I haven’t the slightest idea what it means, as I’m not that familiar with Haidt’s work, but I guess I like the fact that I have a high “care” and “fairness” rating, a low “authority” rating, and that my morality is that of “left liberal”. I’m not very loyal, though!
The site explains what each of these six axes tells you, but I couldn’t be arsed to look in detail.
Your turn!
h/t: Charleen
Hmm. I’m equally un-loyal. I care even more than you do and am more fair. I’m also more pure, whatever the hell that means.
Comparing pie charts we’re very similar although our Purity and Liberty percentages are kind of reversed.
I suspect that most readers of this site will fall in similar ranges… we aren’t much of a representative sample of the population.
OK. Since everyone is posting their numbers…
Care 91.7
Fairness 83.3
Loyalty 16.7
Authority 47.2
Purity 44.4
Liberty 27.8
Strongest moral foundation: Care
Morality closet to Left-Liberal
The foundations are explained further down on the results page.
Have taken the Test
Who is this Attila guy I’m compared with?
😂
He was slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan.
Attila? Great guy – one of the [counts] three musical acts that I’ve actually brought tickets for in advance.
I’m still trying to puzzle out what on Earth (or in, under, or behind, for those matters) “Authority” has to do as a “moral” quality … is really perplexing.
FTFpreamble, “Authority: This foundation was shaped by humanity’s long history of bonding together in hierarchical social interactions. It underlies the virtues of respect for tradition and deference to legitimate authority. It is tied to emotions such as fear, respect, and awe. Conservatives typically score higher on this dimension than left-liberals and libertarians.” “Respect for tradition” as a virtue? That’s not going down well.
Care 66.7%
Fairness 61.1%
Loyalty 16.7%
Authority 16.7%
Purity 8.3%
Liberty 52.8%
I am caring, not loyal, fair and apprently ambivalent about authority 😂
I have near zero loyalty (4%), but I appear to care alot (70%).
Surprisingly, my loyalty was 8%, my care was 26% (not as much as I would have expected).
I’d differentiate my loyalty to *people* (reasonably strong I think) from my loyalty to institutions (very low).
My ‘libertarian’ streak wars with my ‘social conscience / fairness’ streak. Nobody can impose duties on me, but I impose them on myself.
cr
Oh,
Care 26
Fairness 19
Loyalty 8
Authority 10 (that sucks!)
Purity 13 (Me? Pure? Pure crap)
Liberty 23
cr
P.S. I took the test after a few beers. So every answer (almost) was either max green or max red.
I have no idea how much that influenced my score.
cr
Birds of feathers.
“Your scores are:
Care 100%
Fairness 83.3%
Loyalty 38.9%
Authority 52.8%
Purity 16.7%
Liberty 52.8%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.”
Appropriately ambivalent about authority and liberty, it can be practical and it can be problematic. I have to watch that purity though, too much for my liking.
Apparently my group loyalty suck, but I am socialized as a Swede after all, an individualist society. I guess that is also why my care record is a Perfect 10, an individualist society based on social care – but I did not expect that it would show!
Care: 23.7%
Fairness: 17.2%
Loyalty: 9%
Authority: 16.3%
Purity: 14.7%
Liberty: 19.1%
Left-Liberal
I’m damned close to all your results – are you sure you aren’t me in a better mood?
My result is almost a carbon copy of your own.
I also am not sure I understand this but perhaps it explains why I like this site very much.
Me too.
Care: 25.1%
Fairness: 23%
Loyalty: 15.3%
Authority: 8.3%
Purity: 13.2%
Liberty: 15.1%
I had a hard time answering the questions where people said mean things to others. Sure, it’s not nice but it’s also unfair to censor and pretend you aren’t the way you are. So, I erred on “not nice” because there are nicer ways to say things.
Those were my foundation breakdowns. Here are the other breakdowns:
Your scores are:
Care 100%
Fairness 91.7%
Loyalty 61.1%
Authority 33.3%
Purity 52.8%
Liberty 58.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
I don’t understand how you got two completely different sets of scores, Diana.
The page that spits out the results has a breakdown in the pie chart. Those are the ones I initially put.
OK, thanks. I didn’t check and assumed they were identical.
Yeah, there were a lot of questions that boiled down to “Is it okay to be a dick?”
Yeah. I saw it from both sides. Is it ok for me to express myself vs is it ok for me to be a dick in expressing myself? So I just tried to see if from the point of view of the person receiving the dickishness.
Me too. I didn’t give any of those particular questions 3 reds, but I gave them all two iirc.
Yeah. Many of them were mean and, for example I would teach my kids that it’s “not ok” to act like an asshole, but that doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong. There’s a lot of space between “inappropriate” and “morally wrong.” Also, one of them said a bunch of guys set up a men only club and then some women sued them to be allowed to join. I wasn’t sure if I was being asked to pass judgement on the existence of the men only club or the propriety of the lawsuit. These kinds of surveys are always frustrating for these reasons.
I don’t understand how “you shouldn’t act like an asshole” isn’t the same as saying “that’s morally wrong”.
What kind of wrong is it if it isn’t morally wrong? (The only other kind of “wrong” I can think of is “factually wrong”, which doesn’t apply here.)
I agree with you about the frustrating character of these questions. Depending on your assumptions about situational context, one might answer very differently.
You’re absolutely right. I didn’t have my thoughts straight, or express them well in that comment. I guess I was getting caught up on the difference between what is wrong, but should still be legal and what is so wrong it should not be legal. But before I dig deeper, I will stop writing and continue thinking.
I was still stuck on people saying mean things. Is it morally wrong to say mean things because maybe it’s honest? I think the difference was the behaviour – dismissive or mocking that made the moral difference so that made me select the “not ok” way.
Yeah. You could say it’s better to be honest than to lie, but maybe better to just be quiet. Or you could tell someone a hard truth in a kind way rather than be a dick about it. The fact that people can read the same passage and think it is asking totally different questions makes me wonder about the reliability and validity of the test.
Heck, one person on his own can come to different interpretations! I often vacillated, then decided I needed to make some arbitrary assumptions in order to provide an answer.
Now that I entirely agree with.
cr
Well I think everyone has the right to act like an asshole even though its a stupid, often hurtful thing to do. Free expression & all. Its also free to call an asshole an asshole which, is not an assholey thing to do,
But having the right to do something wrong doesn’t mean that the thing isn’t wrong.
The questionnaire, as I interpreted it, was asking if this or that was wrong, not if it was illegal.
Is it morally wrong to tell someone you dislike them if you dislike them? It can be done in a relatively kind way or an assholish way. But what is expressed is the same.
Not arguing with you, just that some (most) of the questions really aren’t clear or have multiple interpretations.
No, it isn’t morally wrong to tell someone you don’t like that you don’t like them. It might not be in your best interest, though, and concealing your feelings might be the wiser course of action. If you’re negotiating a deal with someone you benefit if they think you like them.
But, yes, the questions aren’t clear. Probably intentionally so.
Ah, GBJ, I distinctly remember you saying it’s always wrong to lie.
So, suppose some female of your acquaintance says ‘How do I look?’ and honestly, she looks like an accident in cosmetic surgery. I’m sure it’s being an asshole to tell her that. But is it ‘morally wrong’ to lie or ‘morally wrong’ to tell the truth and ruin her evening?
I’m just a sceptic about that word ‘morals’. Too many different subjective interpretations of what it means.
cr
Maybe I said that, I’m not sure. I remember having an email exchange with Sam Harris after his On Lying came out. His position is clearly that it is always wrong to lie. I argued the other side using a more substantive example (if I remember right)… probably nazis at the door asking if I had seen their victim-to-be, who happened to be hidden in my basement. Maybe I was arguing his case?
Life requires deception sometimes.
But in your example, I do think it is wrong to lie to that acquaintance. She asked me a question and I assume she is expecting me to give her an honest answer. If I lie to her, I’m doing her no favors. If she finds out that I lied about this she will quite reasonably doubt other things I tell her in the future.
I think it would be different if I walked up to her and not having been asked, out of the blue and without any useful purpose, said “You look like an accident in cosmetic surgery”… well that would be wrong because it is gratuitously hurtful.
And the food shaped like poop – how is that morally wrong?
That’s just funny.
Anyone who’s eaten a Baby Ruth knows that.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPxiXGr9nFM&w=560&h=315%5D
Me too. And if people got upset or offended I’d probably find it funnier. So I’m probably a bit of a dick.
Maybe you know your dinner guests are your particularly squeamish grandparents? It’s all in the contextual assumptions.
That is why I gave it only a single green.
I haven it full green because it’s so funny I want to subconsciously encourage people to do it.
My thoughts on the “dog meat” question too. If eating any meat is permissible then dog meat is permissible. I’d do it, only hesitation would be on checking that it’s not been excessively spiced.
I couldn’t do that one. I don’t eat pigs for the same reasons which I know sounds like the scene from Pulp Fiction but I’m hypocritically guilty of not eating the animals I like and I really love dogs and pigs.
Me, too: dogs, pigs, and goats.
A German radio host once said that he is an “occasional vegetarian or emotional vegetarian”. He only eats animals that he doesn’t like, or that look kinda dumb. 😉
Haha! That’s perfect!
Haidt claims that this is a moral concern for those with “purity” in mind.
In my view this is settling a meta-ethical question which should be addressed first.
This was the problem with _The Righteous Mind_ – he claims that “liberals” ignore several dimensions of “morality” that “conservatives” don’t. Not true – or at least those who have thought things through – we instead conclude that some reactions have nothing to do with ethics at all. By all means, be concerned about them, but I’m not convinced they have to be treated at par simply because some people prereflectively think they are.
Yes I think that’s it. I would think it rude perhaps to serve the poo shaped dessert but not morally wrong and I may think rude is even appropriate if it’s funny.
Most questions are easy, while with some I could give either 3 thumbs up or down, depending how one parses them. Anyway, here’s my score:
Care 72.2% Fairness 58.3%
Loyalty 38.9% Authority 27.8%
Purity 11.1% Liberty 61.1%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Looks like I really don’t give a hoot about purity.
Huh –
Purity 5.6%
!
It should read ‘Prudity’…
Your scores are:
Care 83.3%
Fairness 88.9%
Loyalty 47.2%
Authority 55.6%
Purity 22.2%
Liberty 83.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
I’m apparently a caring, puritanical, authoritarian left-liberal.
I’ve gotten more accurate results from a “What Kind of Girlfriend Are You”? questionnaire in Cosmo.
Or maybe your self-image is wrong. 🙂
You have no choice but to accept the test because of your authority score. 😜
Your scores are:
Care 86.1%
Fairness 83.3%
Loyalty 41.7%
Authority 50%
Purity 52.8%
Liberty 63.9%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Your scores are:
Care 77.8%
Fairness 63.9%
Loyalty 36.1%
Authority 30.6%
Purity 55.6%
Liberty 55.6%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
I thought it was odd with both soccer questions. They didn’t seem to be about morality. It was more like both Carl and John were socially incompetent.
Your scores are:
Care 91.7%
Fairness 91.7%
Loyalty 58.3%
Authority 69.4%
Purity 52.8%
Liberty 30.6%
You have no one strongest moral foundation.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Sheesh. All of my scores are between 20% (caring and fairness) and 14.6%.
I’m apparently very cautious in how I answer questions, and could blend in anywhere.
Those are my moral foundations scores. The others range from 72.2% – 52.8%. More like a Left Liberal than anything.
I never touched that red negative button that was furthest left. I was saving it in case they said something like “Jack feels entitled; he has over a dozen bodies in the cellar and will doubtless kill again.”
What people keep in their own cellars is their own business.
Libertarian, right?
Your scores are:
Care 61.1%
Fairness 72.2%
Loyalty 41.7%
Authority 41.7%
Purity 44.4%
Liberty 47.2%
Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Thought I’d score a little more libertarian than that.
Yeah my problem seems to be I really don’t like authority yet I care a lot. No wonder I’m always in trouble.
“I really don’t like authority yet I care a lot.”
Yes!
cr
Your scores are:
Care 44.4%
Fairness 61.1%
Loyalty 13.9%
Authority 19.4%
Purity 16.7%
Liberty 80.6%
Your strongest moral foundation is Liberty.
Your morality is closest to that of a Libertarian.
I don’t ever call myself a Libertarian, though.
I guess you have to now. Test says so. But you won’t because you don’t like authority. LOL.
So, I decided to take the Libertarian Test to see how much of a Randist I was (although I hear Ayn Rand didn’t identity with the Libs).
“You are 27% Libertarian, which makes you a
Libertarian Fellow-Traveler.
Though you are probably *not* a libertarian in your basic political outlook, you are still able to find some common ground with the libertarian cause when it comes to social or economic freedoms (or possibly both). Your political roadmap for society most likely shares part of its route with the libertarians, but your ultimate political goal is probably different from the libertarian one.”
Sounds about right.
Your scores are:
Care 83.3%
Fairness 72.2%
Loyalty 47.2%
Authority 30.6%
Purity 52.8%
Liberty 50%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
—
Which is the prof, but with a higher loyalty/purity score, but lower authority (which I wonder about – given the Prof’s conscientious objector stand against arbitrary authority, and I can’t point to any remotely comparable example of principles in practice in my life).
I found myself clicking the red and the neutral buttons. I think I only did three or four green, and no triple greens. I think only 1 triple red. I had some problems with the questions. Like the one about feeding dog to kids. How was the dog killed? Did the parents kill their neighbor’s dog or did they get it packaged off the internet, organic and cage-free?
Like most here it seems, I was highest in care, and don’t like authority. Left Liberal. I don’t have the exact percentages because I took the test on my smart phone and deleted it…don’t want to take it over.
Your scores are:
Care 86.1%
Fairness 77.8%
Loyalty 41.7%
Authority 47.2%
Purity 58.3%
Liberty 47.2%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
I’m just a disloyal purity-lovin’ left-liberal.
Does anyone have the time, skills, and inclination to do some stats on these responses? That might be interesting.
Care 86.1%
Fairness 69.4%
Loyalty 22.2%
Authority 36.1%
Purity 30.6%
Liberty 55.6%
We apparently mostly have a self-selecting group of very similar people here, left liberals with the odd libertarian, or that’s the only result the machine gives!
Holy crap – I loaded “Grammarly” onto my laptop yesterday and it just popped up, for the first time to provide a critique of this comment (it reminded me that “self-selecting” is hyphenated).
Have no idea what the results indicate. Maybe a very boring person.
Care 21%
Fairness 19%
Loyalty 10.2%
Authority 17.4%
Purity 16.8%
Liberty 15.4%
Here is another morality test: Trump Defends his Son’s meeting with the Russian Lawyer saying most people would have done the same.
My answer is, no they wouldn’t and it is against the law.
Even if most others would have done the same thing (and I agree with your interpretation on that, not his) that doesn’t make it right to blatantly flout the law.
Yes, and you get an A on that one. Yesterday in FBI director hearings, Senator Graham tried the question on Chris Whay who is the guy they are reviewing – What would he do if he were Graham and a foreign person contacted him and said he had info on his opponent to help him in the election. Correct Answer – Call the FBI. And, the fact that Trump’s son in law also went to the meeting, well, he could do 5 years for failure to disclose the meeting on his security forms.
Your scores are:
Care 83.3%
Fairness 58.3%
Loyalty 22.2%
Authority 30.6%
Purity 22.2%
Liberty 77.8%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Care 75%
Fairness 83.3%
Loyalty 38.9%
Authority 66.7%
Purity 50%
Liberty 58.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
I’d need to see pictures of that guy’s niece before I can be sure whether it’s okay for him to order a sex doll though.
I couldn’t stop thinking of Buffy the Vampire Slayer> when Spike makes the Buffy sex-bot.
I hope I wasn’t the only one who thought of Geli Raubal at that question.
I didn’t save my results but they were about like everyone else’s, with care then fairness… and liberty last (left-liberal). So I could care less.
I thought the questions were tough and I wanted to discuss them with someone before making my choices.
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
I’m disappointed that I didn’t this question:
You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But youre not helping.
Best answer to the Voight-Kampf question I ever heard was Vala’s in Stargate: SG1:
Vala: (reading) You are in a desert. You see a tortoise that’s lying on his back in the hot sun. You recognise his plight, but do nothing to help. Why?’ … Hmn. Why…? Ah: ‘Because… you are also… a tortoise…’
Haha!
What desert?
Why would anybody do that to a tortoise?
I would always turn it right-side-up. Invariably.
I can’t see how that question poses any moral dilemma at all. Help the tortoise. There’s no downside.
cr
You wouldn’t if you were a Replicant.
People who are immoral call them Skin Jobs.
Agreed, 3 reds.
The thing I hate about these things are confounds in the questions. So one of my questions was about whether it was OK for girls to be told: You are equal to boys, so you should sleep with as many people as possible without fearing being called a slut. Well I agree they shouldn’t have to worry about being called a slut in an ideal world, but the question was worded in a way that encourages them to seek many sexual partners, which is not as OK, since a large number of sexual partners puts you at greater risk of STDs.
So is the advice OK or Not OK? I actually have a feeling my answer to this question is what placed my Purity score slightly higher than Left-Liberals, since I answered slightly in the negative.
I answered 3 red, based on how I read the question. It wasn’t ok to tell her to sleep with as many people as she wants, it’s not her place to make that call.
OTOH, it’s perfectly fine to sleep with as many people as you want.
I found most of the quesions had little to do with morality. They were asking if it was ok to be an asshole.
” it’s not her place to make that call.”
Then whose place is it?
3 greens!
cr
(The 3 greens was also influenced by my attitude to puritans and ‘morality’)
Similar to you. I had the most difficulty with the drunk woman making out with two strangers. I don’t have a problem with her choice, but I do have a problem with the two strangers, assuming they’re not drunk. I don’t think non-drunk people should be making out with drunk strangers. Drunk people can’t make informed choices.
(although given the chance for a more nuanced answer I might have a problem with her getting drunk, not her making out with strangers)
Scores:-
Care 91.7
Fairness. 83.3
Loyalty 38.9
Authority 52.8
Purity 36.6
Liberty. 66.7
Left liberal.
I can’t disagree with that. Politically, I’m on the left wing of the British Conservative Party. What used to be called a One Nation Tory. Nothing whatever in common with the GOP.
Well that stuffs my day – I thought it was real left, not US left.
Your scores are:
Care 66.7%
Fairness 75%
Loyalty 63.9%
Authority 80.6%
Purity 69.4%
Liberty 75%
Your strongest moral foundation is Authority.
Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.
Hello, fellow “Conservative.”
My scores are:
Care 69.4%
Fairness 72.2%
Loyalty 50%
Authority 55.6%
Purity 58.3%
Liberty 69.4%
My strongest moral foundation is Fairness.
My morality is closest to that of a Conservative.
Interesting test. Seems to bear out Haidt’s thesis: that whereas liberals skew towards Care and Fairness, conservatives care about all five pillars. Although, to be fair, I was closer to the liberal Care/Fairness average, and my Loyalty, Authority, and Liberty were all in the middle, below the typical conservative.
My only outlier was Purity, which was right up there with the conservative average. I found this a little surprising, since it takes a lot to arouse my disgust, and I pushed the scale all-the-way green on the poop-shaped cake question, because I thought it was funny. Guess the other ones got me though.
I found everyone poop dessert funny too. I wonder how many people do & what that says.
I got Fairness and Left-Liberal. Roughly where I would have placed myself before doing the test. I’m not sure that it proves very much: either you agree with what it claims to say about you, or you will find some way to quibble with the result.
I got stuck at question 1.
Is it OK to argue with a police officer during a traffic stop?
There are consequences that Brian will have to bear. Do I feel sorry for the police officer … I might; then so what?
“So what” depends on whether you’re black or white. If you’re black he might shoot you without bothering to argue.
Bit contextual that one – what happens (as in what are you asked?, do you have to justify something?, gives lots of information?) at a stop in the US might be different than in NZ. The only times I have ever been stopped are for speeding “fair cop guv’ and drink driving tests so no big deal.
I’m 14 points less caring, and 25 points more loyal, but otherwise within 5 points of our host on the other four factors.
Looks like neither one of us is gonna make it onto an Ivory Soap box in the purity department.
I’m afraid we lawyers aren’t too pure! My least important category as it turns out.
As a lawyer (albeit an academic labour one) I was quite pleased with 86.1/77.8 on fairness which was strongest both times I did it.
Low on loyalty which I interpret as I would act for anyone who pays
I get the following but have some caveats
Your scores are:
Care 91.7%
Fairness 63.9%
Loyalty 52.8%
Authority 52.8%
Purity 58.3%
Liberty 58.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Caveat:
I actually regard the classical conservative definitions of Loyalty and Purity to be flawed. Loyalty can be important, but there are other values that supercede loyalty and should be followed if they conflict with one’s loyalties.
Purity is not an ethereal disassociation from sexuality. Rather it is a dedication of one’s whole being to a sense of integrity.
One of America’s better Christian theologians, William Countryman, argues that classical sexual morality is way too much based on a purity ethic, when it should really be based on an integrity ethic. The two ethics may some of the time come to the same conclusion but for different reasons. (WC is openly gay, BTW.) A similar-minded writer whose name escapes me refers to the classical viewpoint as “angelism”.
Here’s a caveat of a different sort: “The Dark Side of That Personality Test” https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/the-internet-is-one-big-personality-test/531861/.
Your scores are:
Care 100%
Fairness 66.7%
Loyalty 19.4%
Authority 41.7%
Purity 55.6%
Liberty 41.7%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Like others, I found some questions hard to answer. The scenario might present a rude thing to say, but is it immoral? Not necessarily.
Your scores are:
Care 72.2%
Fairness 75%
Loyalty 41.7%
Authority 38.9%
Purity 41.7%
Liberty 61.1%
Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Your scores are:
Care 100%
Fairness 83.3%
Loyalty 13.9%
Authority 33.3%
Purity 25%
Liberty 58.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
Your scores are:
Care 88.9%
Fairness 44.4%
Loyalty 52.8%
Authority 83.3%
Purity 47.2%
Liberty 58.3%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.
I did it twice
Left-Liberal both times which is reassuring
Care 72.2/58.3
Fairness 86.1/77.8
Loyalty 22.2/16.7
Authority 55.6/50
Purity 44.4/30.6
Liberty 58.3/58.3
Some questions tricky/ slight change of wording and I would have changed my view completely
Tell young women they should sleep with as many boys as possible and not be considered sluts = bad. Tell them they should be able to sleep etc = good
“Demand ” they stop selling = bad, “request = good.
Some a bit vague. Employed the more ‘attractive’ woman. Purely physical = bad/ more attractive overall incl personality etc = OK/good
In case people are not familiar with Haidt, he seems like a smart guy, but his thinking is more conservative than most of what I’ve read on morality. Anyway, I found his book The Righteous Mind to be well written, but I think his moral foundations theory has some flaws, which I tried to point out in my review, if anyone’s interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1584517211
Hi cbranch, it seems we are largely in agreement about the metaethical question that Haidt runs roughshod over. See above.
Yep. I did actually enjoy the book though; it’s nice to read a rationally argued position, even it’s one that is ultimately unconvincing.
Your scores are:
Care 88.9%
Fairness 61.1%
Loyalty 27.8%
Authority 36.1%
Purity 47.2%
Liberty 50%
Your strongest moral foundation is Care.
Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.
A small majority of these questions lacked the context necessary to answer them in a less than arbitrary way. I particularly agree with all of Gordon’s points above. Renders the whole thing kind of shallow and pointless, so I hope no one is using the results for research.
Care 69.4%
Fairness 80.6
Loyalty 30.6
Authority 30.6
Purity 19.4
Liberty 50%
Closest to left liberal.
I somehow suspect that if taken another day the results might be slightly different.
However I like to be impure, but fair 😆
My numbers:
Care 83.3%
Fairness 77.8%
Loyalty 33.3%
Authority 36.1%
Purity 19.4%
Liberty 58.3%
But I found many of the questions problematic, because they give insufficient background. For instance, the one about the American flag and the toilet. Did she use the flag as a rag as a childish act of rebellion against her father? Did the father abuse her as a child? Are the emigrants (i.e., the flag brings back bad memories for the child)? What was the father’s purpose in keeping the flag; to remind him of good times or bad times? Did the daughter know?
You can’t – or at least I can’t – properly assess the morality of a decision without having enough context.
I come out in the Coyne neighborhood, and am closest to left-liberal. I think this is quite an accurate assessment.
I thought this was interesting, but had a few problems. In the one about the feminist lawsuit, were we meant to assess the morality of the single-sex club or the lawsuit? In the one about sex ed, were we meant to assess the part about not shaming girls or the advice about indiscriminate sex?
A lot of the questions are like that – they have *two* occurrences to potentially assess, and insufficient context. For example, will someone be “slutshaming” the boys too?
I got very similar scores to Dr. Coyne. Some of Haidt’s categories (loyalty, purity) are just as likely to be immoral as moral depending on what your are loyal to and what triggers your purity awareness. If you’re loyal to the nazi party, that is not an indication of great moral character. If you’re into slut shaming “impure” young women, again, not that great a moral character. Really, the only dimensions which make consistent sense in terms of a moral compass are care, fairness, and to a lesser degree, freedom. I do admire Haidt’s effort to try to systemize morality into discrete dimensions, however.
I think you have completed missed what Haidt is saying. He is emphatically not saying you are more or less moral if you are loyal. He is saying that some people value loyalty in and of itself and some do not. The test is to see if you are one of those people.
Care and left-liberal 🙁 I did not know that about myself.
Have not yet taken the test but read quite a bit about Haidt’s approach over the years. Sometimes it sounds as if he tries to say that liberals have an incomplete set of morals compared to conservatives because they don’t care much about purity, authority and (supposedly) loyalty.
I’d say that classifying liberty, purity and authority under “morals” is a category error (although I can see where loyalty comes in), but Haidt would probably just say that this marks me out as a liberal.
I’d also say that trying to divide humans into a box called “conservative” and a box called “liberal” is so parochially early 21st century US-American that it isn’t sociology so much as a joke. I don’t identify as either; those boxes would not mean much to many people on the planet right now; and once we try to ponder how many humans 10,000 years ago would have fitted into either it all becomes completely absurd.
Ah, I see they have a third box (libertarian), only that it is even emptier than the other two and would have been even more meaningless to anybody more than perhaps 150 years ago, if that.
I got mostly the same values with exception of only two thirds of your authority but double of your loyalty. 🙂
Many questions lacked information, though, that I would need to really evaluate them morally. Some I had to answer neutral because of that, others that I would answer “not clever to do so, but morally okay” I gave only one bar of right. Vice versa, “wrong but understandable” got only 1-2 bars of wrong from me depending on the case presented.
Some Questions I think I didn’t answer in the way the authors intended. For example, the one about visiting a grave seems to target loyalty or care, whereas I don’t think you have to keep promises like that to dead people who I believe are completely “gone” from the universe and thus can’t be hurt by my (omitted) actions. So I don’t think it says anything about my morality towards living people.
All in all the test had too many ifs and whys for my taste. And it may lack a foundation of “reason”, i.e. moral decision based on rational social and psychological considerations.
Strewth! You lot are so PURE!!!
Care 77.8%
Fairness 50%
Loyalty 47.2%
Authority 25%
Purity 5.6%
Liberty 63.9%
While the comment count is 125, I’ll tot up the averages.
Answers in a few minutes.
I dread to think how this is going to get mangled by WordPress.
N=31 Average Min Max SD
Care 69.80 26 91.7 37.9
Fairne. 66.55 19 83.3 31.7
Loyalty 23.55 8 38.9 13.8
Author. 35.15 10 52.8 19.2
Purity 28.35 13 44.4 14.6
Liberty 39.17 23 66.7 24.0
Care. : 15 Fairness : 5 Authority : 1 Liberty : 1
Left-Lib : 24 Cons : 3 Libertarian : 1
That’s actually moderately surprising to me. Though we like to think of ourselves as being “caring”, that trait (if it has any basis) is actually where we’re most variable. “Loyalty” and “purity” are the least (same caveat).
Note that the terminology for the test is “American” (and to a lesser extent Canadian), not European.
Also, it contains no way to distinguish social democrats from Democrats (which are only left in US terms).
Oh don’t waste your time with these tests. Too many flaws with Haidt’s arguments. The questions in this test could be tweaked in order to get the kind of result you want beforehand.