The Revised Moral Foundations in Iran: Validation and Sociodemographic Correlates

As a culture-sensitive theory in moral psychology, Moral foundations theory (MFT) has generated a considerable volume of studies since its inception. The theory has very recently been refined by splitting the Fairness foundation to Equality and Proportionality, leading to the introduction of a second version of its corresponding questionnaire, namely, Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (MFQ-2). Given the low internal consistencies of a number of moral foundations in the former version of the questionnaire (i.e., Moral Foundations Questionnaire-1), the present study aimed to examine psychometric properties of the Persian MFQ-2, including its relation to MFQ-1. Data were collected from two separate samples (N1 = 381, N2 = 989). Internal consistencies of the subscales were acceptable and comparable to those from cross-cultural studies, in addition to showing an improvement over MFQ-1. Exploratory factor analysis led to four factors, with Loyalty, Authority and Purity loading on one, and Care, Equality and Proportionality each loading on a separate factor. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested acceptable fit for the proposed six-factor model and a number of second-order two-factor models. Subscales were most strongly related to their corresponding MFQ-1 subscales, confirming their convergent validity. We also replicated and went beyond the existing literature on sociodemographic correlates of moral foundations by investigating the relations between the revised set of moral foundations and both religiosity and political orientation in the context of the non-Western Iranian culture. Proportionality had the weakest relations to sociodemographics among all foundations. We close by discussing implications of the findings for the content validity of MFQ-2 foundations and justifiability of labelling them as individualizing and binding foundations.