My results based on the Moral Foundation Questionnaire
What are your moral foundations? It is an interesting question and one I find compelling. An ongoing study tries to provide some insights into yourself on the back of questions you choose answers to from a drop down menu on www.yourmorals.org. This chart up there, tells me how I stack up against the average liberal or conservative. The green bar represents my moral foundations, blue for the average liberal and red for the average conservative.
On a scale of one to five, this test tells me I place a very higher premium on not harming anybody and fairness, have moderate loyalty, no respect for authority, and veer towards the puritanical.
What does that say about me?
When all the tests that are part of this study are stacked up, the answers around who I am and what I stand for, I was surprised. I always thought I'd average out as liberal.
But I find myself at various points given various situations. There is a capitalist in me, a socialist, a liberal, an autocrat, a conservative. All put together, there is enough fodder in here in chew on.
I take this scale reproduced above seriously because its co-creator is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who teaches ethical leadership at the Stern School of Business.
I first got acquainted with his work when I chanced upon his absolutely delightful The Happiness Hypothesis. Reviewers called it one of the best books to have emerged out of the Positive Psychology movement. I am no authority to comment on that. But I can say it offered me sharp insights into ancient wisdom across all traditions. I think it a mandatory book on all shelves.
I think everybody ought to give these tests a try and then spend time reflecting on what they're about.