How do the moral foundations attract the needle of a moral compass?: Relative scores as a supplementary method of measuring moral foundations

Moral foundations (i.e., care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) are systems that help people make important decisions. We propose a new approach to the scoring of moral foundations by measuring their relative importance (i.e., how important the foundation is compared to others). In Study 1 (N = 1283), we observed that absolute and relative scores give different information. For example, women scored higher than men on absolute care, fairness, and purity; however, women scored higher than men on relative care, and men scored higher than women on relative loyalty and authority. In Study 2 (N = 341), we observed that absolute and relative scores of moral foundations gave different between-sex and between-country-type results. For instance, non-WEIRD women scored higher than WEIRD (i.e., Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) women on absolute loyalty, authority, and purity; however, they scored higher only on relative loyalty. Our results suggest that supplementing moral foundations research with relative scores is a considerable contribution, as relative scores may better reflect the context of everyday decisions when people are forced to decide about the importance of different moral foundations.