Confusion is definitely centered in the Republican quadrant. Via Dan Kahan who wants us to focus on the rainbow effect. But to me the most striking thing about this pattern is the rarity of deep confusion outside the top left quadrant. Cover that quadrant with white paper and mentally extrapolate. Then look at the data again.
Had a hard time believing that was real data on first glance. It is. Yikes.
I've been staring at this. The left hand key to colors is a little confusing, as it looks like it might be a label for the y axis. A closer look reveals egalitariansim hierarchy. It's interesting to me that climate deniers often identify their targets as hierarchical, when they themselves rarely diverge from opinions handed down from "on high". That is, the ones that are not busy spreading disinformation on purpose, and since they are informed enough to know they are lying, that's a real study.
I don't know where those specific labels came from either. I've asked over at the original post. The initial data only seemed to have a liberal conservative axis. This grid graph looks a bit like it's just assuming those two axes from the single liberalconservative one (hence the trumpet shape). Could be wrong, often am.
Sorry - by "specific labels" I meant the x and y axis names, "individalism communitarianism" and "egal hierarchy".
Gah, sorry for multiple posts, meant to say - the original graphic, on face value, is fantastic. I think I prefer it to this grid one (especially until we know whether those axis values actually came from separate survey questions; I'm not sure they do.)
hierarchial individualists?
Dan, the original graph doesn't show the way that humpback distorts. Picture = 1000 words?
It is, however, an odd and subjective evaluation, and perhaps not particularly useful to the true problem, which is getting people to acknowledge there is a problem and work together for the common weal, acknowledging that we will all lose if we set ourselves in opposition to reality.
My interpretation of the wording on the original post is that they really do have a two-axis cultural scale for respondents. Kahan's reponse (now posted) in the comments appears to confirm that.
Yes it is linked in the OP
http://www.culturalcognition.net/storage/two_dimensions_color.png
and it gets worse
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/1/11/amazingly-cool-important-article-on-virulence-of-ideological.html