Diagnosing Moral Foundations: Testing of the Russian Version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire

Introduction. The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), developed on the basis of J. Haidt's moral foundations theory, has become a popular tool for studying morality. The questionnaire contains five scales corresponding to moral foundations – namely, harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Despite moderate reliability of the scales, the technique can be instrumental in identifying moral foundations of social stereotypes and political beliefs in Russian samples, as well as in developing Russian instruments for diagnosing individuals' morality. This study presents the psychometric characteristics of the MFQ Russian version and provides new evidence of the relationship between moral foundations and other variables. Methods. To verify the validity of the proposed MFQ Russian version, we employed the Portrait Values Questionnaire (S. Schwartz) and the Short Dark Triad questionnaire (M. S. Egorova et al.) for measuring Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) was employed for evaluating respondents' tendency to social desirability (E. N. Osin's adaptation). Socio-demographic characteristics were identified using a special questionnaire. Results. Testing the modified version of the questionnaire on a sample comprised of 354 individual participants showed a moderate reliability of five primary scales (0.62–0.68) and a good reliability of secondary scales (0.79–0.84). The factor structure of the MFQ Russian version demonstrated a satisfactory level of matching the original technique. The respondents' answers reflected a moderate level of social desirability. The scales of moral foundations and secondary scales (‘ethics of autonomy' and ‘ethics of community') showed the expected relationship with values, negative personality traits, religiosity, and gender. Discussion. The unique outcome of pilot testing of the MFQ Russian version was the demonstration of a direct relationship between the individualizing and uniting moral foundations. All other results are in good agreement with the predictions of moral foundations theory and with the conclusions of previous studies.