It is often assumed that the higher the IQ, the stronger the moral compass. New research published in 2025 in the journal Intelligence
However, this idea is challenged by analyzing the links between cognitive abilities and declared moral values among British adults. The results all point in the same direction: people who perform best on reasoning tests say they attach a little less importance to several major intuitive moral principles, whether benevolence, loyalty or purity.
Researchers use Moral Foundations Theory and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 (MFQ-2) to measure six intuitive moral foundations, then relate them to general intelligence. Key point for the reader: the article does not measure “morality” in the broad sense, but the intensity with which the participants say they recognize themselves in these principles.
High IQ and moral values: what the study results show
In an initial study, 802 UK residents completed the MFQ-2, then 463 took tests of verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning. A second study on 857 adults, pre-registered before collection, used the same procedure. The authors publish data, coefficients and analysis scripts in open access on the Open Science Framework (OSF) platform, which reinforces transparency around these results.
Statistical models confirm the Morality Suppression Model: the higher the general intelligence score g, the lower the adherence to each of the six foundations. The effects remain modest, around -0.2 for the “binding” foundations as well as for the “individualizing” foundations, but they appear in both samples and for women as well as for men. One result attracts attention: verbal ability is particularly linked to less importance given to the foundation of purity.
The six moral principles analyzed by researchers, explained simply
The Moral Foundations Theory distinguishes two “individualizing” foundations (benevolence and equality), centered on the protection of each person, and four “binding” foundations (proportionality, loyalty, authority, purity), which support the cohesion of the group. Concretely, this covers as much the refusal to make someone suffer as the value given to respect for traditions or the idea that behavior can be impure even without a direct victim.
In work on Moral Foundations Theory, liberal people mainly emphasize the individualizing foundations, while conservatives adhere more to the six. Here, high intelligence scores go hand in hand with a slight decline on all dimensions, not just loyalty, authority, or purity. The authors argue that analytical reasoning could weaken the strength of automatic moral intuitions by encouraging people to question these norms.
Why these results don’t prove that high IQ makes you less moral
The data remains correlational: there is nothing to confirm that intelligence lowers moral foundations, or the reverse. Values are self-reported and the sample is limited to adults in the United Kingdom. The study therefore does not say whether the most gifted are kinder or more selfish, only that they declare themselves to be a little less guided by their intuitions and more by explicit reasoning.