The five-factor model of the moral foundations theory is stable across WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures

By Burak Doğruyol, Sinan Alper, Onurcan Yılmaz. 2019

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Although numerous models attempted to explain the nature of moral judgment, moral foundations theory (MFT) led to a paradigmatic change in this field by proposing pluralist “moralities” (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity). The five-factor structure of MFT is thought to be universal and rooted in the evolutionary past but the evidence is scarce regarding the stability of this five-factor structure across diverse cultures. We tested this universality argument in a cross-cultural dataset of 30 diverse societies spanning the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) and non-WEIRD cultures by testing measurement invariance of the short-form of the moral foundations questionnaire. The results supported the original conceptualization that there are at least five diverse moralities although loadings of items differ across WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures. In other words, the current research shows for the first time that the five-factor structure of MFT is stable in the WEIRD and non-WEIRD cultures.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d2977721bd07b852a83cf9e52d56eda83264ff78