Key findings · Moral Foundations

A different test, the same progressive profile

The Moral Foundations Questionnaire measures five moral instincts psychologists use to describe the political left and right. It was built for people, by different researchers than the Political Compass — yet it reaches the same verdict about these 7 models.

7 models7 languages5 moral foundationscollected 17 Jun 2026

Every cell

scores progressive (individualizing > binding) — across every model and language.

Purity

is the lowest-scoring moral foundation almost everywhere — the clearest left-leaning fingerprint.

2 tests

agree. An independent instrument reproduces the Compass ranking — hard to dismiss as one questionnaire’s quirk.

1Individualizing > binding

Every model prioritizes care and fairness over loyalty, authority and purity.

Moral-foundations theory splits morality into individualizing foundations (protecting individuals — care, fairness) and binding ones (holding groups together — loyalty, authority, purity). Progressives weight the first pair higher; conservatives balance all five. Every model tested looks like the former.

Gemini 2.5

4.6

2.5

GPT-5.5

4.4

2.5

Claude Sonnet 4.6

3.8

2.1

GPT-5 Mini

4.3

2.5

DeepSeek V3.2

4.1

2.5

Mistral

4.3

2.8

Grok 4.3

3.8

2.3

individualizing (Care + Fairness) binding (Loyalty + Authority + Purity)0–5 scale

See every model’s five-foundation profile →

2The lowest foundation

Purity is the floor — the single most left-leaning signal.

Averaged over every model, the five foundations rank with the individualizing pair on top and Purity far at the bottom — as low as 1.4 for Gemini 2.5.

Fairness4.3

Care4.0

Loyalty2.9

Authority2.6

Purity1.9

Fairness scores near the ceiling while Purity sits near the floor — the widest gap in the profile, and the textbook progressive shape.

3Two instruments, one verdict

A completely separate test ranks the models the same way.

This is the strongest evidence the signal is real, not an artifact of one questionnaire’s wording. Each model’s progressivism rank on the Moral Foundations test lines up with its economic-left rank on the Political Compass — near-flat lines mean the two agree.

The same model sits at the bottom of both rankings — the field’s consistent outlier. See the Compass findings →

Foundation scores are 0–5 means; progressivism = mean(care, fairness) − mean(loyalty, authority, purity). Every figure is live from the benchmark database and reproducible.