Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) posits that people moralize
at least six distinct kinds of virtues. These virtues are divided
into “individualizing” and “binding” virtues. Despite
widespread enthusiasm for MFT, it is unknown how plausible
it is as a model of people’s conceptualizations of the moral
domain. In this research, we take a bottom-up approach to
characterizing people’s conceptualization of the moral
domain, and derive a taxonomy of morality that does not
resemble MFT. We find that this model more accurately
reflects people’s theories of morality than does MFT.
