Moral Scrupulosity OCD Test

Questions: 18Time: ≈ 4 min

Read each of the 18 questions and pick the answer that matches your own experience best; there are no right or wrong choices. It takes about 4 minutes, and at the end you will see how pronounced your signs of moral scrupulosity are.

Start the test

A woman sits at a kitchen table at dusk, chin on her hand, with swirling lines above her head and a small balance scale wobbling in front of her.

What does it take for a doubt about your own honesty or kindness to show up? You tell a friend her new haircut looks great, and a beat later you ask yourself whether that was an honest thing to say. A news story about a charity fraud comes on while you chop onions, and you start wondering whether you have ever been dishonest yourself. After a chat with a neighbor you leave with a vague feeling that something was off, and by evening the question "was I fair to them?" has taken shape. Dishes, a quiet kitchen, nothing going on, and out of nowhere the thought lands: are you actually a decent person? The doubt is already waiting when your alarm goes off, a low hum of "did I do something dishonest?" before the day has had a chance to give you a reason.

When you start doubting something you said or did, how far does that doubt spread? Did your joke at lunch land badly? That is the whole doubt, and it ends with that one joke. One awkward message of yours pulls in two or three other conversations from the same week, each of them still a small, separate question. A single curt remark grows into the question of what kind of friend you are, period. Having snapped once at a colleague starts to look like evidence, and you reason that anyone who could do that must be seriously off in who they are. You treat one forgotten reply as final proof that, deep down, you are a dishonest and unkind person.

How easily can you let a doubt about your own conduct go without settling it? Nothing else gets your attention, not dinner, not the film, not the person talking to you, until you have thought the doubt through to a definite verdict. In a meeting it tugs at your sleeve again and again, and each time you have to shove it aside on purpose. You tell yourself "later" and turn to something else; after ten minutes of that effort, the doubt loosens its grip. It shows up halfway through your making tea, and by the time the kettle clicks it has lost its edge. The doubt flickers, you notice it, and your eyes are back on the screen; nothing had to be decided.

How does an unwanted thought about doing something wrong feel next to actually doing it? Picturing yourself snapping at a cashier is just noise, as far from snapping at one as imagining rain is from getting wet. You imagine yelling at a slow driver, feel a flicker of discomfort, and know perfectly well nothing has happened. Imagining that you took credit for a colleague's idea leaves a residue, as if you had done a watered-down version of it. Having pictured yourself lying to a friend's face, you feel close to as bad as if you had said it, and you dodge their eyes at the next meetup. A flash of wishing a rival would fail leaves you feeling exactly as you would after sabotaging them.

For how much of the harm around you do you feel responsible? Your sense of responsibility covers what you personally did or decided: the email you sent, the promise you made. A teammate you picked for a task makes a mistake, and you feel a share of it is yours because you chose the person. The committee you sit on votes five to four and the outcome stings someone; your one vote feels like it counts toward the harm. A restaurant you once recommended turns out to have rude staff and ruins a friend's anniversary, and you carry it as your fault. A stranger loses a wallet in the station where you happened to be walking, and you trace a thread back to something you could have done to prevent it.

How do you treat a small, ordinary slip of your own? You forget to answer a text for two days, send a quick apology, and it is gone from your mind by lunch. A friend's birthday message goes out a day late; you wince for a minute, add a joke, and that is the end of it. Taking an extra sample at the market stall nags at you for the rest of the afternoon, more than a shrug and less than a crisis. Returning a library book two weeks late feels like something close to stealing, and you rehearse your apology for the librarian. Leaving a tip fifty cents short sits in your head on the same level as cheating someone out of real money, and you judge yourself that way.

After a conversation with someone, how deeply do you replay it, looking for an unworthy motive of your own? The conversation ends when the other person walks off, and your head moves on to the next errand. On the walk home you run a quick flashback of what you said, then let it drop. Once, in the evening, you go through the whole exchange line by line to check how it sounded. You replay it in the shower, again on the pillow and again at breakfast, each time asking whether you meant something other than what you said. At two in the morning you comb through an hour-long chat sentence by sentence, certain there is a hidden selfish reason buried in it somewhere.

How many times do you go back over something you have already written or decided, to make sure nothing dishonest or unfair slipped in? You write a review of a restaurant, read it through once, post it, and never open it again. The insurance claim form gets a second read before you mail it, and then it is done. You open the text you sent your landlord a handful of times over the evening, tracing every phrase for something untrue. You recalculate an invoice that was plainly right more than a dozen times, long after any reasonable person would have been sure. You reread the email to a customer, then the whole thread, then the email again; the chance that a line was misleading never clears, so you start over the next morning.

Once you have made a final decision, how easily do you accept it as settled, motive included? You turn down a friend's invitation, and for weeks you keep reopening the choice to ask whether your real reason was selfish. You treat the matter as closed for an evening, then the question about your real reason comes back, and you open it up all over again. Your jaw stays tight after you tell your brother you cannot lend him the money, and you sit on the edge of the bed going through your reasons one by one, hunting for anything greedy, until near midnight you can say aloud, "That's settled." A quick "was that just laziness?" as you send the message cancelling Saturday's potluck, a half-smile at the honest answer, and you are already looking for your slippers. The call is made, your reasons are your reasons, and you go and cook dinner.

How easy is it to keep a small, ambiguous moment to yourself, without telling anyone about it? A remark in a meeting might have sounded curt, and you bring it up to a colleague that same afternoon, since otherwise you cannot put it down. At dinner you hold your tongue about the same kind of remark, but it costs so much effort that your jaw stays tight until dessert. A small mix-up with a delivery stays private, although part of you keeps rehearsing the sentence that would tell your partner. The odd moment at the checkout stays with you only until the first traffic light on the drive home. A comment to a friend that may have come across as brisk never crosses your mind as something to report.

When you doubt something you said or did, how much does settling it depend on asking someone else? A walk around the block is enough to reach your own answer, and you keep it to yourself. For a whole day you try to work it out alone; when it will not budge, you finally text a friend. You mull it over, then run your reasoning past your partner, and the two together settle it. As soon as it comes up you call your sister, and her read does the heavy lifting while your own thinking barely registers. Until someone looks you in the eye and says you did nothing wrong, the question stays open, however well you have argued it yourself.

After someone has reassured you about something you did, does the doubt stay settled? Your friend says "that was fine," and that is the end of it. The reassurance holds for you until a situation turns up that is hard to read, and then one quick second look closes it again. You were told it was fine on Monday; by Wednesday the doubt is back in different words, and you have to argue it through again before it sticks. The doubt returns by the weekend, so you put the same question to the same person a second time, slightly rephrased. Whatever answer you get, the doubt is back by evening in a new form and you ask again; no version of the answer ever sticks.

How readily do you go ahead with a small decision that could turn out to be the wrong call? Choosing which of two coworkers to ask for help carries a chance of being wrong, so you pass on both and manage on your own. A dinner invitation sits unanswered until the host rings you to settle the headcount. You fill in the office gift-collection form only after a long, visible wavering, rereading the amount twice. You pick a restaurant for the group, pause for a moment, then book it and move on. You see a gift, buy it on the same stroll, and trust that it will be fine.

When an answer could later look dishonest, unfair or unkind, how long do you put it off? A colleague asks whether you can cover a shift, and you answer on the spot. You sleep on a request and reply the next morning. A friend asks for your honest opinion of her business plan, and you sit on the question for a week, far past the point she expected a reply. Your neighbor has to ask twice about the shared fence, and only the deadline gets you to answer. The landlord's email asking which date suits you stays open in a tab for weeks; the right answer never turns up, and you reply only when something outside forces your hand.

What do you steer clear of in order to avoid a moral misstep? A colleague suggests adding a lunch you never ate to your expense claim; you refuse that one thing, and the rest of your work life carries on as before. Besides padding expenses, you also skip two or three things next door to it, like rounding up a shared taxi fare. Group gift collections, split-the-bill dinners and borrowing a friend's car all get a polite no from you, because each one means handling someone else's money or property. You skip the office party, keep the group chat on mute and leave favor requests from acquaintances unanswered, since any of them could put you in a spot where you might say the wrong thing. You cross the road to dodge a coworker, change the subject whenever honesty comes up and have stopped walking down the street where you once had an awkward exchange, though nothing wrong happened near any of them.

How quickly does guilt over a small or uncertain slip fade for you? A month on, the remark you made at the party still burns as hard as it did that night, and you cannot see where it ever lifts. Guilt over a late reply to your aunt loosens only after a month, long after she has forgotten about it. After snapping at a barista, the guilt grips you for a day and a half before it eases. You wince after a curt reply to a coworker, sleep on it, and by breakfast the sting is gone. You feel a pang over keeping a colleague's pen, and it is gone within minutes, as small as the thing itself.

What does it take for guilt about something you did to settle? The bus ride home is long enough for you to see how minor it was, and the matter closes. One short apology text does it; once it is sent, you feel finished. You apologize and think it through, but the unease returns that evening and needs another round. You go back to check, apologize again and ask two people whether it was all right before the unease eases off. You pile up checks, apologies and "are we okay?" questions, and there is still no version that closes the matter for good.

How does the strength of your guilt compare with how serious the lapse really was? Forgetting to thank your neighbor stings a little, while breaking a promise to a friend hits hard, and you feel the gap between them. A rude tone at the counter hurts more than it should, yet you still feel a clear gap between that and a real betrayal. You tell a white lie about liking a sweater, and the guilt that follows weighs about as much as if you had really deceived someone. Your dread over a comment that may or may not have sounded unkind runs close to what a deliberate cruelty would bring. Something you only imagined saying weighs on you just as crushingly as a real, certain wrong would.

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How this test works

Methodology

This test is based on an approach from cognitive-behavioral research on obsessive-compulsive patterns that gather around right and wrong in daily life: whether you are honest, fair and kind to the people around you.

The 18 questions cover six areas: doubts about your own character that arrive uninvited, treating a bad thought as almost the same as a bad deed, going back over what you said or did, telling others or asking them to confirm you are in the clear, steering around situations where you might misstep, and guilt that outgrows what actually happened. Your answers add up to a level of these signs.

Everything rests on self-report in a single sitting, so the result reflects how you see yourself today and is no substitute for a conversation with a clinician. For broader background, see the NIMH page on OCD and the NHS overview of OCD.

The test is not a diagnostic instrument and cannot stand in for an evaluation by a qualified professional.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is moral OCD, and how is it different from regular OCD?

Obsessive-compulsive patterns can attach to many different themes. When the theme is whether you are an honest, fair and kind person, people often call it moral OCD. The mechanics match the other themes: an unwanted doubt shows up, then comes something you do to quiet it. Only the subject changes, and this test looks at that moral thread alone.

Does an intrusive moral thought mean you are a bad person?

No. Doubts like these tend to land hardest on people who care a great deal about doing right, so the thought tells you about your values, not about your behavior. The harder it nags, the more the question matters to you.

How can you tell moral scrupulosity from a strong conscience?

Look at the size and the ending of the guilt. A strong conscience speaks up when something real happened, and it goes quiet after you have thought it over or put it right. In scrupulosity the guilt is out of scale with the event and keeps going after you have apologized, checked or been reassured, then returns in a new form.

Can this test diagnose scrupulosity or OCD?

No. It shows a level of signs based on your own answers, and nothing more. A diagnosis comes only from a qualified clinician after talking with you. If these doubts take up a large part of your day, your family doctor or a mental health professional is a good first stop.

References

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
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
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
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

Author: Lex Tarrel, personality type expert Reviewed by: Igor Lyadskiy, PhD

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Moral Scrupulosity OCD Test

Quiet compass Your signs of moral scrupulosity are minimal.

Second glance Your signs of moral scrupulosity are mild.

Right in the middle Your signs of moral scrupulosity are mixed, at the borderline.

Long ledger Your signs of moral scrupulosity are noticeably elevated.

Closed circle Your signs of moral scrupulosity are pronounced.

Your results are no accident

Your result card

How this test works

Methodology

Frequently Asked Questions

What is moral OCD, and how is it different from regular OCD?

Does an intrusive moral thought mean you are a bad person?

How can you tell moral scrupulosity from a strong conscience?

Can this test diagnose scrupulosity or OCD?

References

Moral Scrupulosity OCD Test

Quiet compass Your signs of moral scrupulosity are minimal.

Second glance Your signs of moral scrupulosity are mild.

Right in the middle Your signs of moral scrupulosity are mixed, at the borderline.

Long ledger Your signs of moral scrupulosity are noticeably elevated.

Closed circle Your signs of moral scrupulosity are pronounced.

Your results are no accident

Your result card

More tests like this

How this test works

Methodology

Frequently Asked Questions

What is moral OCD, and how is it different from regular OCD?

Does an intrusive moral thought mean you are a bad person?

How can you tell moral scrupulosity from a strong conscience?

Can this test diagnose scrupulosity or OCD?

References