Test · Mental health

Moral Scrupulosity OCD Test

Eighteen short situations about honesty and kindness, with no verdict on you as a person. A few minutes, and a calmer look at how this works in you.

≈4 min Questions: 18

A song thrush stepping across a mossy garden stone toward a small snail, with a wooden bench, a clay pot and hydrangeas behind.

Know that feeling when a small remark from yesterday suddenly asks whether you were honest, or kind enough? If you are here, this test does not decide whether you are a good person. It shows how that kind of doubt works in you right now. In 18 short situations, choose the answer closest to how it goes for you lately; none of them is right or wrong. It takes about four minutes, and at the end you get a calm reading of how strongly these patterns show up. Is it a conscience doing its quiet work, or a doubt that keeps asking again?

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A small question about your own honesty or kindness lands in your head. What had just happened before it arrived?
Say you wonder whether a remark you made to a coworker came across as unfair. How far does that doubt travel?
A doubt about something you said at lunch drifts in while you are busy with other things. How easily does it go?
You are carrying a friend's favorite mug when the thought flashes that you could just drop it. How does that thought sit with you afterward?
A dinner you helped organize ends with some tension between two guests. How far does your sense of responsibility reach?
You tell a friend a movie starts at seven when it starts at half past. How do you treat that slip afterward?
You had a short chat with a neighbor this morning. Later, what happens to it in your mind?
You sent a client a note with a price and a delivery date. How many times do you go back over it to be sure nothing misleading slipped in?
You turned down a friend's request to help with a move, and the decision is final. How does it sit afterward?
You made a joke at dinner that might have stung a little. Nobody mentioned it. How easily do you keep that to yourself?
You wonder whether an email you wrote came across as rude. What role does asking someone else play in settling it?
A friend has already told you that leaving a gathering early was perfectly fine. Later the doubt about it returns. What happens next?
A coworker asks you to pick between two wordings for a group announcement, and either could land slightly wrong. How willing are you to just choose?
A neighbor asks whether you can water their plants over the weekend, and a yes or a no could each seem unkind or unreliable. How long do you hold your reply?
A colleague splits the lunch bill on an app. What do you steer clear of when money and fairness are involved?
You walked past a coworker without returning a greeting and may have seemed cold. How long does the guilt about that last?
You answered a message much later than you meant to, and someone waited. What does it take for the discomfort to settle?
You realize you walked off with a pen from a bank counter. How does the strength of your guilt compare with how much that slip matters?

Maryna Lyadneva psychologist

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How this test works

Where the questions come from, what the scale rests on, and why the result is not a diagnosis.

The test measures, by self-report, how strongly six patterns of persistent doubt about one's own honesty, fairness and kindness show up at present.

Author Maryna Lyadneva

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Methodology

This page gives a snapshot, not a verdict. The answers come from one sitting and from a person's own report, so the result reflects how things feel at the moment and may read differently on another day. It is not a clinical interview.

The questions are written for this test and stay with everyday ethics: being truthful, being fair, being kind to the people around a person. Each question offers five short scenes, and the points they carry add up to a total that falls into one of five bands of signs.

Behind the questions are six threads: guilt that outweighs the event, replaying and re-examining what was said or done, steering clear of moments where a wrong step is possible, going back to other people to confess or to be told one is decent, a passing thought that feels nearly as heavy as acting on it, and doubt about one's own behavior that arrives unasked. The wording builds on research that approaches repetitive moral doubt from a cognitive-behavioral angle. General background on the wider condition is available from the National Institute of Mental Health and from the NHS.

This test is not a diagnostic instrument and does not replace a specialist. It neither confirms nor excludes obsessive-compulsive disorder. Only a qualified specialist can diagnose it, in a face-to-face assessment that a self-report cannot stand in for.

Questions

Can this test tell me whether I have OCD?

No. It points to how strongly certain patterns show up in your answers, nothing more. Whether someone has obsessive-compulsive disorder is decided by a qualified specialist who meets them in person. If these patterns weigh on you, a psychologist or psychiatrist is a sensible place to start, and there is nothing alarming in that.

How do I tell a strong conscience from moral scrupulosity?

Look at what the guilt does afterward. A conscience at work fits the size of the lapse and loosens once the situation has been thought through or an apology made. In scrupulosity the discomfort stays or circles back, even when the thinking is done and the apology already given.

Does a nagging moral thought make me a bad person?

No. Research points the other way: this kind of worry tends to visit people for whom being good matters a great deal, rather than people with a poor record of behavior. How sharp the doubt feels says something about what you care about, not about how you have acted.

What is moral OCD?

OCD can attach itself to many themes. The word moral names the theme when the repeating doubt is about one's own honesty, fairness or kindness. It is not a separate condition, and this test looks at that single theme only.

Sources
  1. Abramowitz, J. S., Huppert, J. D., Cohen, A. B., Tolin, D. F., & Cahill, S. P. (2002). Religious obsessions and compulsions in a non-clinical sample: The Penn Inventory of Scrupulosity (PIOS). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40(7), 825–838. doi:10.1016/S0005-7967(01)00070-5
  2. Abramowitz, J. S., Deacon, B. J., Olatunji, B. O., Wheaton, M. G., Berman, N. C., Losardo, D., Timpano, K. R., McGrath, P. B., Riemann, B. C., Adams, T., Björgvinsson, T., Storch, E. A., & Hale, L. R. (2010). Assessment of obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions: Development and evaluation of the Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. Psychological Assessment, 22(1), 180–198. doi:10.1037/a0018260
  3. Abramowitz, J. S., & Jacoby, R. J. (2014). Scrupulosity: A cognitive–behavioral analysis and implications for treatment. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 3(2), 140–149. doi:10.1016/j.jocrd.2013.12.007
  4. Miller, C. H., & Hedges, D. W. (2008). Scrupulosity disorder: An overview and introductory analysis. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22(6), 1042–1058. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2007.11.004