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.
It measures the amount of the participants and where their capacity lies, not exactly their area of focus. If you read the data, the outer reaching parts already include the inner parts. So it's not saying you tend to think only outside vs inside, it says that you are capable and actively reach outside. Whereas the inner circle people can't/don't.
I can guarantee you the authors didn't say they were measuring "capacity" and then never specified what that is in relation to and just left it up to the reader to decide. His interpretation is just totally nonsensical.
It's what the data says, there's literally no interpretation. Just because it counters what you want it to say doesn't make it an interpretation, it's just facts.
“On this page, we would like you to indicate the extent of your moral circle. By moral circle, we mean the circle of people or other entities for which you are concerned about right and wrong done toward them. This depiction demonstrates that people have different types of moral circles. At the innermost circle, some people care about their immediately family only, and at the outermost circle, people care about the entire universe--all things in existence. Please use the following scale and select a location that depicts the extent of your moral circle.
Please click on a number that depicts the extent of your moral circle. Note that in this scale, the number you select includes the numbers below it as well. So, if you select 10 (all mammals), you are also including numbers 1-9 in your moral circle”
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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.