If I were to offer some advice to these people regarding the Watyz et al study, as I have before, it is to only criticize it's methods. Once you accept the findings as valid, no amount of twisting them makes the left look good.
The best-case and low-resolution reading for them is that they have an outgroup preference / suicidal empathy. Their outermost loci of care centres around animals/plants/fungus/bacteria/etc. They interpret this as meaning they care about everything, including the centre circles of family/friends/nation. The high resolution reading; however, is that they don't care about anything or anyone, because how much care can be allocated to each concentric circle is limited, just as real ability to care is limited by time/energy/capacity. By allocating their limited care to the outer limits of non-humans, that care is divided amongst all the items more central, diffusing said limited care amongst so many things as to not care for anything in particular, a fraction of a fraction of a care point for each approaching infinite thing. Except, perhaps, care for themselves, depending on speculation as to why respondents, as organized by political ideology, chose to do this.
That's why I said, if they must talk about this study, they should posit that the respondents didn't understand the instructions, because either that "misunderstanding" revealed suicidal outgroup preference OR that they care about absolutely nothing. The latter, higher-res, conclusion is an even more damning one for them than the suicidal empathy one. But this is a study and they pathologically need to trust science as symbolic of their intelligence, so rather than take the best read for them - that subjects didn't understand/study is flawed beyond useful interpretation - they just shout that no one else does, continually reminding the lay public of the study, causing more to actually read it. When they read it they will low-res conclude these people don't care about their own families as much as fungus, or high-res conclude that they care about nothing. I know you're not supposed to interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake, but worry not, their obsession with being seen as scientifically correct will not allow them to drop the subject nor select the most favorable interpretation for their class - that the results are a methodological error and science is a liar sometimes. In any way validating this study also validates that the left-leaning people surveyed here either have suicidal outgroup preference or (more accurately) care about no one, except perhaps themselves, selecting what they believed was the most pro-social option - what's called social desirability bias in surveying - "look what I good person I am. I even care for asteroids."
Every other possible interpretation, outside methodolical error, is devastating for their political class, and no amount of spin leads to the conclusion they want - that they love everyone/thing. No, they either prefer outgroups or they prefer nothing besides erroneously trying to make themselves look virtuous as a characteristic of their poitical class.
