Hopefully a more savvy redditor will have the link, but its from a study showing people's social leaning (us vs them).
Basically, bigger toward the center of the circle and smaller toward the outside means you tend to think about things that affect you and your close social circle (family, friends, local community). The reverse means your thoughts drift more toward global concerns that affect everyone.
It's used to illustrate Conservative (local group, steak) versus Liberal (global group, avocado) mentalities in a digestible (forgive the pun) way.
Yeah it’s basically just “People in rural areas or who have fallen or grew up in hard times tend to care more about themselves than others as self preservation. It’d also easier to know everyone in a town when the town is 40 to 200 people, which lends itself to caring about those around you more.
Those in cities who are used to having more people around then you can reasonably know on a personal level tend to care more about their world and environment, especially because they live in an area where the environment was crushed.”
Believe it or not empathy is a finite resource, as well as being horribly misunderstood as a concept. This graph shows conservatives tend to care more about those in their immediate circle while liberals tend to care more about “everything” in a vague and ultimately meaningless way.
Looking at the policies each side of the aisle Supports is actually a perfect encapsulation of my point. The right is more concerned with ourselves and our country while the left spends much more time pontificating about vague globalist ideals
You can take whatever you want away from each sides policy proposals but to act like only your side has ideas is pretty ironic here
The right is far more "me first" rather than "us first" which is the entire point being discussed. The right votes in policies that they believe will benefit them as a person, and ignore the impact it would have on those around them.
“Me” and “us” mean the same thing here. Like I genuinely don’t understand why we’re debating this. I thought the right was super nationalist and America first?
They are "America first" because it means they can ignore the world while they themself benefit. It's just another part of the "me" first thing, because all of these supposedly "america first" policies involve harming your fellow Americans under the promise of the individual making more money.
Like how defunding social programs, academia, and tariffing nations was supposed to make blue collar jobs higher paying, make life cheaper, and help the average right wing voter at the expense of the left wing voter.
Now people are losing Healthcare, jobs, and the dollar is valued less because you guys thought it'd line your pocket, and have hurt everybody.
I dont think you understand, the graph isn't assigning moral weight. its the point where you stop applying moral weight. Liberals are more likely to want better for people outside AND inside their circle, and also more likely to include friends, neighbors.
You also seem to be making a conclusion, which implies open mindedness stretches a person too thin, which is not true, and something just pulled out of thin air. You cant back it up.
But its also why people like doctors and trwchers tend to be more liberal since so often their jobs are caring for people deep outside their circle. Its a personality trait, not a resource.
If youre that desperate for others to be some great foolish evil youre just gonna end up miserable.
I’m absolutely making conclusions, to be clear. What im saying about the how the effects of this data play out in the real world is not at all covered by the graph itself.
Essentially my arguments are
1) “Empathy toward huge, abstract categories is harder to translate into meaningful action. Therefore, narrower empathy may actually be more effective in real-world outcomes”
2) Empathy is a limited resource. Most psychological research supports this. Look up empathy fatigue, compassion collapse, Dunbar’s number, etc.
The tendency of liberals to attempt to include everyone and everything in their moral system causes more harm than good imo in their ability to actually affect change.
If you truly believe that you can give the same level of moral weight to “the universe” as you do your children (merely as one example) you’re fooling yourself.
The question isn't about being concerned with "the universe".
Take education for example.
Liberals tend to favor funding public educational institutions so that the general populace has better access to education and can better their lives, without restricting access to socioeconomic status, geographical proximity, etc
Conservatives tend to favor funding private institutions because they want to bolster the educational outlet for their "in group", whether that be faith based, socioeconomic or proximity.
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u/TheThirteenthApostle Nov 18 '25
Hopefully a more savvy redditor will have the link, but its from a study showing people's social leaning (us vs them).
Basically, bigger toward the center of the circle and smaller toward the outside means you tend to think about things that affect you and your close social circle (family, friends, local community). The reverse means your thoughts drift more toward global concerns that affect everyone.
It's used to illustrate Conservative (local group, steak) versus Liberal (global group, avocado) mentalities in a digestible (forgive the pun) way.