Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
Department of Complex Systems Science, Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
PLoS One. 2019 Mar 25;14(3):e0213343. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213343. eCollection 2019.
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.
道德基础词典（MFD）是应用道德基础理论中所发展的概念框架并量化人们所传达的语言信息中所隐含的道德意义的有用工具。然而，由于 MFD 仅以英文提供，因此其适用性有限。因此，需要 MFD 的翻译版本来研究各种文化中的道德，包括非西方文化。本文的贡献有两点。我们使用半自动方法开发了 MFD 的第一个日文版本（称为 J-MFD）-这为将 MFD 翻译成其他语言提供了参考。我们接下来通过分析日本参与者认为遵循和违反五个道德基础的情况的开放式书面文本，测试了 J-MFD 的有效性。我们发现，J-MFD 正确地将日本参与者的描述归入相应的道德基础，并且道德基础问卷（MFQ）得分与伤害和公平基础中参与者描述的情况频率、总字数和 J-MFD 字数相关。J-MFD 可用于研究日本特有的道德以及道德行为的多元文化比较。
