The well-known Political Spectrum website is, best as we can tell, the brainchild of an obscure Green Party supporter (which might explain why they consider Keir Starmer and Joe Biden to be on the authoritarian right). It’s also, as you’ll know if you’ve taken it, woefully inadequate for its purposes. You have to go out of your way to sound like a cartoonish villain not to end up with a result in the libertarian left quadrant (which is also where the creator places his own preferred politicians and parties).
For a while I’ve been interested less in the policy and self-interest reasons behind people’s political affiliations, and more in the emotional side of their partisanship. The Empathy Spectrum posits that more than the details of policy (which can move specific interest groups or engaged swing voters, but don’t touch most partisans), people vote on the basis of empathy — specifically, who it should be extended to, how much should be given, and what the threshold is for considering someone worthy of it.
The Empathy Spectrum encompasses three axes:
Extent: How much of yourself you can devote to those you care about?
Range: How close to yourself do you extend your empathy? Is it focused on individuals or groups, and is it interpersonal or general?
Threshold: How much does it take to move you to extend…
