A Critical Evaluation of the Factor Structure and Validity of the Moral Character Questionnaire

The Moral Character Questionnaire (MCQ) is a new measure of global morality and six morality domains (i.e., honesty, compassion, fairness, loyalty, purity, and respect). Critically, there is limited evidence on the questionnaire’s psychometric properties, especially its predictive validity with measures other than self-reports. In two demographically-diverse, German-speaking samples (N1 = 7,138, N2 = 616), we found acceptable-to-good reliability, unidimensionality of three domain-specific scales (i.e., compassion, loyalty, and respect), and good discriminant validity. Higher-order and bifactorial solutions both fitted the data reasonably well. However, only the compassion and fairness scales showed acceptable convergent validity across 27 broad and narrow morality-related traits, and only the purity scale was consistently correlated with six different measures of self-reported (im)moral behavior (i.e., civic behavior, counterproductive work behavior, crime and analogous behavior, prosocial behavior intentions, vandalism, and violence). No MCQ scale predicted behavioral measures of dishonesty (Mind Game) or prosociality (Social Value Orientation Slider and Triple Dominance Measure). Overall, our results question the validity of the MCQ to predict morality-related behaviors in particular and call for further validation of the questionnaire to carve out what it can and cannot serve for.