Development and validation of the Japanese Moral Foundations Dictionary.

Akiko Matsuo,Yasuhiro Taguchi,Kazutoshi Sasahara,Minoru Karasawa,Oliver Gruebner

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0213343

Akiko Matsuo, Yasuhiro Taguchi + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213343

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Mar 25, 2019
Citations: 43	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Nagoya University, Aichi University

Abstract

The Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD) is a useful tool for applying the conceptual framework developed in Moral Foundations Theory and quantifying the moral meanings implicated in the linguistic information people convey. However, the applicability of the MFD is limited because it is available only in English. Translated versions of the MFD are therefore needed to study morality across various cultures, including non-Western cultures. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. We developed the first Japanese version of the MFD (referred to as the J-MFD) using a semi-automated method—this serves as a reference when translating the MFD into other languages. We next tested the validity of the J-MFD by analyzing open-ended written texts about the situations that Japanese participants thought followed and violated the five moral foundations. We found that the J-MFD correctly categorized the Japanese participants’ descriptions into the corresponding moral foundations, and that the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) scores correlated with the frequency of situations, of total words, and of J-MFD words in the participants’ descriptions for the Harm and Fairness foundations. The J-MFD can be used to study morality unique to the Japanese and also multicultural comparisons in moral behavior.

Highlights

One of the most active research areas in social and behavioral sciences pertains to how and on what grounds ordinary people form moral judgments
Our method is beneficial for developing other language versions of the Moral Foundations Dictionary (MFD), which are needed because multilingual versions allow us to test the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) in different languages and compare diverse cultures using the same basis of the MFT [1, 18]
We showed that the Japanese version of the MFD (J-MFD) allows us to correctly categorize moral-relevant situations in Japanese-written texts into the corresponding moral foundations, which serves as validation of the J-MFD

Summary

Introduction

One of the most active research areas in social and behavioral sciences pertains to how and on what grounds ordinary people form moral judgments. A central message from this flourishing body of research is that people quickly decide whether a particular act is morally right or wrong; it takes them a relatively long time to provide a “why” explanation for their judgment [1]. This intuitionist model of moral judgment has produced voluminous empirical research as well as a comprehensive theoretical framework—this is formulated as the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). It is assumed that there are five major moral foundations including: (1) “Care,” which focuses on not harming others and protecting the vulnerable; (2) “Fairness,” which assumes equivalent exchange without cheating to be good; (3) “Ingroup,” which concerns a collective entity instead of individuals, such as family, nation, team, and military; (4) “Authority,” which postulates respect for authority, resulting in maintaining the hierarchy; and (5) “Purity,” which involves a feeling of disgust caused by the impure

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