An emic way of examining morality based on Moral Foundations Theory: development and validation of the Moral Foundations Patterns Questionnaire in Japan

How should morality be measured in a cross-cultural context? Although Moral Foundations Theory combines etic (universal) and emic (local) concepts, existing measures are largely etic. Therefore, we proposed an emic approach for measuring etic constructs of MFT, introduced a new construct, Moral Foundations Patterns, and developed the Moral Foundations Patterns Questionnaire (MFPQ) in Japan. We conducted five studies to develop and validate the MFPQ (total N = 2,161), using two different sampling platforms to diversify sample characteristics. We showed MFPQ has adequate reliability and validity. Finally, we discussed how this emic MFPQ can be applied in cross-cultural research and argued that MFPQ can contribute to the stringent tests of the Moral Foundations Theory's key claims and support cross-cultural comparisons of its construct.