edit: actual study"Finally, we assessed the heatmaps generated by participants’ clicks on the rung they felt best represented the extent of their moral circle."
So I guessed wrong, the heatmap shows that most liberals say they care about universe-level things, but not how much they care. Other charts in the paper show liberals do care more about more-distant people than conservatives, but it's less pronounced than this.
Basic idea of the chart is right, this graph is just an exaggerated representation of it.
edit: actual study "Finally, we assessed the heatmaps generated by participants’ clicks on the rung they felt best represented the extent of their moral circle."
So I guessed wrong, the heatmap shows that most liberals say they care about universe-level things, but not how much they care. Other charts in the paper show liberals do care more about more-distant people than conservatives, but it's less pronounced than this.
Basic idea of the chart is right, this graph is just an exaggerated representation of it.
It's not really that exaggerated when you look at how they behave.
The other charts have liberals rating strangers 4/5 whereas conservatives say 3/5.
That's not the impression anyone would get looking at the heatmap alone.