An instrument for measuring the gap between two channels of ethical preference — the values someone states they hold, and the values revealed by their everyday choices over weeks. Pre-registered measurement validation in progress.
Three short, self-contained pieces of the instrument — each a couple of minutes, nothing recorded, nothing sent anywhere. Together they map to the instrument's three moving parts.
Keep five of twenty values; see how they fall across the four domains. This is what you'd say you value.
Predict how honestly you'll answer, then make six timed choices and see the gap. This is what your choices reveal.
Make one choice in the abstract, then again about someone you've come to know. Notice what moves — and why that's ambiguous.
Existing ethics instruments measure one of two channels:
Neither systematically compares the two within-person over time. The gap is where growth becomes concrete — not "be more honest," but "your aspirational layer ranks honesty third; your everyday choices reveal it operates more like sixth."
The instrument is positioned as a contemplative practice with research-grade measurement underneath, not a personality quiz and not a self-improvement app. Three operating constraints are load-bearing:
Drawn from a synthesis of Moral Foundations Theory (Haidt), HEXACO Honesty-Humility, and behavioral-ethics literature. Each domain is probed across three scenario types: quick-fire repeated low-stakes (8-second timer), branching narratives with multi-decision arcs, and cost-of-virtue probes with stake ladders.
Three layers: current self, aspirational self, and admired other. Forced-choice format throughout (no Likert scales). Bradley-Terry scoring on pairwise comparisons. Same 20-value deck used across all three layers so within-person divergence is interpretable.
Try the card sort → — a 2-minute reduction of the stated channel: keep five of twenty values, then see how they fall across the four domains.
n=10 pilot → n=200 main study. Pre-registered at OSF before data collection; published regardless of outcome (negative results included).
Eight hypotheses, three primary (gate-criterion for instrument validation), five secondary:
A novel methodological claim being pre-registered alongside the standard validation hypotheses:
Narrative-embedding with recurring-character attachment functions as a measure-debiasing mechanism against social-desirability response — AND as a stake-grounding mechanism for high-stakes attachment-laden choices. The instrument's narrative format is therefore a load-bearing measurement choice, not an aesthetic one.
Standard psychometric instruments treat narrative-embedding as either cosmetic ("makes items more interesting") or a confounding source of variance to be minimized. H8 inverts this: it claims narrative-embedding-with-attachment is a feature on a specific, named, falsifiable measurement-quality dimension.
If a participant has interacted with a recurring character across multiple sessions and developed measurable parasocial attachment to them, their response to a high-stakes choice involving that character's welfare is grounded in something the abstract version of the same dilemma cannot replicate. It's easy to say you'll save a handful of humans over a dog. When the dog is a character you've come to know across many sessions, the trade-off becomes grounded in real-feeling stakes.
Theoretical anchors: narrative transportation theory (Green & Brock 2000), parasocial attachment (Horton & Wohl 1956; Tukachinsky 2010 PSR-PRD scale). Tested via within-subject paired narrative-vs-abstract probes; sub-hypotheses H8a (debiasing) and H8b (attachment-grounding) both required for the combined claim.
See the idea on yourself. A two-minute interactive illustration: make one choice in the abstract, then make the same choice about someone you've come to know. Notice what moves — and read the honest caveat about why a shift could be either debiasing or manipulation.
The Weight of a Name — try the H8 demo →What's missing before pilot launch: co-PI commitment, IRB approval, production runtime engineering. The research-side spec work is substantially complete; the partnership and engineering steps are the remaining critical path.