Source
Atari, Haidt, Graham, Koleva, Stevens & Dehghani (2023), LIT-500 (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 125(5)), read in NOTE-398.
What was actually shown
Development (Studies 1a–1c, N = 3,360). 116 candidate items, written and tested in the US, India, Iran, Ecuador and China, were cut to 36, six per foundation, in a “describes me” format.
Structure (Study 2, N = 3,902, 19 nations). ESEM: CFI .979, RMSEA .024. Multi-group CFA: CFI .896, SRMR .070, taken as configural invariance. Reliabilities ω .73–.95, Purity lowest.
Invariance (Table 6). Intercept non-invariance by alignment: Care 5.3%, Equality 21.9%, Proportionality 11.4%, Loyalty 24.6%, Authority 16.7%, Purity 39.5%. Only Purity exceeds the 25% threshold.
Equality and Proportionality. Mean r = .21 (SD .13) across nations, from .47 (UAE) to −.04 (Belgium), more nearly orthogonal in WEIRDer nations. They predict different criteria: redistribution and merit.
Networks. In the US, Care–Fairness and the binding three form separate clusters. Exploratory graph analysis finds one dimension in most of the 19 nations and two in three (Ireland, New Zealand, Peru). Authority is the most central node in 14.
Cultural distance. Distance from the US correlates with all six, most with Purity (r = .43), then Loyalty (.25).
Validity (Study 3, N = 1,410). 17 of 18 preregistered criterion correlations are supported. Mean adjusted R² over 30 outcomes: MFQ-2 .37, MFQ-1 .30.
What this does not say
- That Purity is the least WEIRD foundation. That correlation uses the one subscale that fails invariance, over 19 nations.
- That the six fit in small-scale societies. The samples are online, literate and mostly urban (p. 65).
- That every item measures its own foundation. Four items load more strongly on Authority than on their own factor (NOTE-398, Corrections).
- That the MFQ-2 predicts better everywhere. Study 3 is 82% US.
- That six is the count. Liberty, honour, honesty, ownership and efficiency remain unmeasured (p. 64).
Connections
- It refines THEORY-539: the 2013 chapter said “We do not believe that there is an ‘equality’ foundation” (LIT-499, p. 114).
- Its ideology results extend THEORY-435.
- The charge that morality-as-cooperation omitted Purity (p. 64) rests on the Purity results above, not on a test of that theory (THEORY-468).
Note of 2026-10-30: what holds it back
The title’s three national networks rest on a dimension count the accepted manuscript gives inconsistently (16 and four samples for 19 nations, three named; NOTE-398), and the version of record, which may correct it, is unread. The title also says “nearly uncorrelated in WEIRD nations” where the paper reports only that Equality and Proportionality are more nearly orthogonal in WEIRDer nations (mean r = .21), so it would need narrowing to a report of the 19 online samples before ADR-065 could promote it.