This paragraph makes libertarians sound like J.S. Mill, seeing liberty not as a terminal value but a means to maximize global utility:

Perhaps more intriguingly, when libertarians reacted to moral dilemmas and in other tests, they displayed less emotion, less empathy and less disgust than either conservatives or liberals. They appeared to use "cold" calculation to reach utilitarian conclusions about whether (for instance) to save lives by sacrificing fewer lives.

But it hard to reconcile a utilitarian worldview with this:

All Americans value liberty, but libertarians seem to value it more. For social conservatives, liberty is often a means to the end of rolling back the welfare state, with its lax morals and redistributive taxation, so liberty can be infringed in the bedroom. For liberals, liberty is a way to extend rights to groups perceived to be oppressed, so liberty can be infringed in the boardroom. But for libertarians, liberty is an end in itself, trumping all other moral values.

The study says that libertarians are "libertarians were moderately more utilitarian than conservatives, and slightly more utilitarian than liberals." But they also value liberty as a terminal value more than liberals or conservatives. I don't see how this can be reconciled.