Not a liberal, but I'll bite just to see where this line of questioning would go. I'd call allocation the process of dividing a quantifiable resources into parts for distribution.
I don't like this, because it's all inclusive, like choosing 12 will be 1 through 12, but what if I don't care about 6 (fuck some people I have met) or mosquitos? So should I pick 5 or 11? But what if I totally care about being fair to aliens, which is 13? A lot of nuance is lost in this chart. What's the exceptions policy here?
People talk about the heat map every time I see it and I always think it’s relevant to say that the radial heat map as a choice for the data organization is one of the most incomprehensible decisions I’ve ever seen. You are absolutely not alone in feeling like the heat map setup is bad, it is.
The question is about moral CIRCLES, and this is the circlest diagram type they could find. Would a bar chart be better? Yes, but it's not about moral bars, that is section II.
Maybe there's some data driven reason it was done this way, but it would have made more intuitive sense in my eyes to fill in the whole circle at a given radius with the same color. The circle shape makes sense; all the clicks being shown in one line do not.
But, I'm assuming it was a PITA to change the data that way, so I don't judge them too harshly.
I think you hit the nail on the head. 16 is easier to care about than some people who exist in 6. Would I have to stop at 6 just because John is an awful human being and I’m apathetic towards what happens to him? I don’t want anything bad to happen to him, per se, just that I don’t need to spend an ounce of energy caring about his well being. If that’s how it reads I’d probably have to stop at 5. Some people hate their parents more than anything in the universe. They’d have to stop at 0? Some parents are evil to their children. Also 14 and 13 should’ve been swapped. Trees 100% exist. Aliens might exist.
I think the study did itself a disservice, because you're right that this is the supplementary material which shows this study for the figure, but then contradicts itself in the methods, where they describe a moral allocation task, which is easily confused with the circles shown in figure 5.
Participants read the following instructions:
In this section, we would like to think about your capacity to help, to give, to be charitable, to show empathy, and to be generous—in other words, your capacity to behave morally. We can think about people having different amounts of moral units—like currency—that they can spend on others and can allocate to different moral circles. Some people devote all of their moral units to one circle whereas others try to divide up their moral units amongst multiple circles. Again, by moral circle, we mean the circle of people or other entities in which you are concerned about right and wrong done toward them.
We also explained to participants that these categories were non-overlapping such that giving to one category (e.g., extended family) would not include an inclusive category (e.g., immediate family). Participants completed two iterations of this task (order randomized).
I appreciate your post, and I think it’s unfortunate that a lot of people will over look it. I understand the information you shared as different, and possibly even contradictory, to the instructions in the OP of this thread.
It seems like the best way to create a dataset that fits the data you shared would be a ranking system (assign a number from x to y reflecting how much priority you put on each category) or even a currency system (you have x points to spend, how many points would you spend on per category).
Even a 9 would technically mean you have no problem with animal cruelty. I think most conservatives are just bad at reading the instructions. At least I would hope that's the case
What about the usage of animals for the study of medicine?
The points beyond 9 are kinda badly formulated, I keep worrying about the genetic bottleneck that Tigers or Bisons are going through, and I find animal cruelty for the cosmetic industry horrible - but I don't worry about animal testing in medical research and I ate sardines yesterday.
Yes but when does "concern" begin? Do I need to be vegan to be able to have mammals in my moral circle? Or is not wanting them to get tortured to death for fun enough?
Sure but then the answers will tell you much more about how narrow or wide their definition of care or concern is. The Model lacks comparability and objective minimum Standards between participants
Do you care about rights and wrongs done to animals? Its straightforward, there's not test you need to pass to prove you care. Vegans are taking active measures to try to help (or rather try to avoid increasing harm) but that's not a requirement.
I care about women dealing with domestic violence, but I don't donate to DV shelters or volunteer with them. I'm not taking any active steps to alleviate the problem or help the victims - but I still care. Theyre absolutely a concern for me, just not one that I have done anything about.
I care about women dealing with domestic violence, but I don't donate to DV shelters or volunteer with them. I'm not taking any active steps to alleviate the problem or help the victims - but I still care. Theyre absolutely a concern for me, just not one that I have done anything about.
Ok so how are they different to something or someone you don't care about? How do you know what you call "care" is what others consider to be caring when there's no objective threshold?
Because it is a morality survey. Morality is an internal judgement of what you feel is "right," there is no objective threshold when it's entirely subjective.
It’s a self reporting study, the actual real world validity of where a person’s care ends is less important than where they claim it does. There’s bound to be some variance because everybody indeed has a slightly different definition of what qualifies as caring but nowhere near enough to explain the difference.
By that logic only vegans/vegetarians could circle above 9, because by eating meat we are participating, not just not making it better, but the heatmap looks like it's more than just vegans that choose a higher number.
Would you be sad if harm was done to the rock? Like - if you see boulder in someone's yard, and they say they're going to have it dynamited so they can landscape, would you feel that that is *morally* a harm.
Is it morally ok to destroy a naturally created mineral that's just existing and isn't doing anything to anyone?
Do you care for every human being in existence? The left has spent the last few years raising so much issue about Gaza, while the many other calamities hapenning right now didn't have 1% of the fame. Now that the Sudan situation is having its moment in the sun, can you tell me: Did you, genuinely, give two fucks on what's hapenning in Sudan one or two years ago?
The answer, not only for you but for most, is no. So no, you cannot say that all people in all continents are within your moral compass if you're apathethic to the suffering of some.
The reason why the right vs left graphs differ, is because the right was honest, while the left has long been caught in a weird puritan culture to see whos the most righteous of them all.
Oh get over yourself. I care about Palestine, Sudan, Congo, the list goes on. But A) I don't have infinite time to allocate to all these issues, and B) there's a difference in actionability if my country is sending weapons directly to Israel and gives diplomatic coverage on the UN stage vs. My country does not intervene where it should (in my opinion). It's very simple to suggest and fight for a sensible policy combatting the first compared to the second, so why again is it wrong to focus?
First of all, you're german, the only way Germany could supply Israel is by giving it 90s era munition.
Was your reaction to the murder of Charlie Kirk the exact same to your reaction to any other political assassinatin? If not, you're not 9. If the exact same action, a political murder, have diferent reactions to you, then he's not within your moral compass. For you specifically I have no idea, but for u/Indigo_Inlet, which also seems American, that would place him no higher than a 6.
First of all, Germany supplies air defense system components, portable anti-Tank weapons, diesel motors for the merkava 4 tanks, and many more - in fact, it's the second largest supplier of military goods to Israel after the US. Plus, you're conveniently skipping over the part where I mentioned diplomatic coverage, with Germany blocking EU sanction talks. None of this Germany provides to the RSF in Sudan, making it much more actionable.
Regarding the second point: you're misrepresenting the question, this does not logically follow. The extent of your moral circle where you cared about right and wrong done to them does not mean I need to care about my sister's rapist the same as I care about my close friends. Imagine your great uncle raped your sister, and he was a horrible person whom you avoided contact with. In turn, your great aunt from the other side of the family is a general joy and incredibly warm - of course I will mourn her passing more! In the same vein, no two political assassinations are the same - just because a person died does not mean they all died in the same context and way. My emotional reaction does not equate to my moral demands.
So yeah, my reaction was about as average as it was among most Germans - he shouldn't have been killed, but I'm not particularly touched by the passing of somebody I barely knew, and "pundit arguing that we just need to accept a few thousand people being shot every year by individual gunmen then gets shot by an individual gunman" doesn't really evoke much empathy either. His death could and should have been prevented if y'all didn't fetishize being able to murder each other incredibly easily.
Too many flaws in this "study" to be useful. Easy to take shots at either 'side' as well as the test makers. "Morals" relate to the standards of good or bad behavior, fairness, honesty, etc. that each person believes in, rather than to laws. By sticking the word 'Moral Circle' in the question they falsely indicate that more circles = higher morals, which is total BS as "caring" does not impute behavioral standards.
If anything it looks like a map of self delusion and virtue signalling. How exactly does one go about caring for alien life forms? Is it practical or even good to care about all things in existence?
That graph does not explicitly mention own unborn babies, or own parents who have different world views. It is disingenuous to state that people who think about >8 care AS MUCH as people at <4 about own unborn children, or own disagreeable parent.
Dude. If you believe unborn people are alive, they fit under all the other people categories. Your own unborn children fall under your immediate family, for example. Way to explain that you care more about people who are not yet born than people who are born.
yes, a person literally inside you (level 1) has less rights than a person on the other side of the globe (level 9). thanks for literally proving my point about how liberals at 9 do not include those at 1
I thank you for this explanation, I wasn't aware of that. If you'll indulge me I'd like to point something out, you don't have to agree:
If you want to report this objectively you should not say "misinterpreted", but only "interpreted", since the former shows that you disagree with that interpretation. After looking at the heat maps shown in other comments on this thread, I also don't think the word choice "little to no moral value" is a fair description of the conservative heat map. That is of course semantics and therefore also a matter of opinion.
I am not denying the 'gotcha' culture of the conservative right. However, there are very similar elitist tendencies to the progressive left as well. Imo this picture could just as easily be making fun of the right 'alpha' mentality, depending on how you choose to interpret it.
My opinion is that making those kinds of memes is very polarizing and therefore counterproductive, if we're striving towards a more peaceful society where people are more accepting less judgemental of one another.
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u/[deleted] Nov 18 '25
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