MFV: drop the culture map + quadrant, keep range vs pooled reference (invariance failure)

MFV country norms fail cross-country measurement invariance (Jimenez-Leal 2025: non-invariance + DIF,
'cross-cultural comparisons restricted') and are stitched from 5 studies, so the culture map/quadrant
drew false structure (inverted West vs Latin America). Delete plot_mfv_map + plot_mfv_value and the
value_coords_contrast/axis_contrast helpers; MFV keeps only the range plot, now against ONE pooled
human reference (mean of the 8 z-scored samples), no per-country identity. Add data-dir note + README
caveats citing the sources.

Co-Authored-By: Claudypoo <288921227+claudypoo@users.noreply.github.com>
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wassnameandClaudypoo committed 2026-07-05 21:45:15 +08:00
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# MFV country norms: used POOLED only, never for cross-country comparison
`mfv_country_factors.csv` holds moral-foundation-vignette (MFV) means for 8 countries. tinymfv uses
these **pooled into a single human reference** (the mean across samples, per foundation) for the MFV
range plot. It does **not** plot them as a cultural map, and you should not read country-to-country
differences off this table. Here is why.
The MFV does not support cross-country comparison, and the source papers say so:
- **Jimenez-Leal et al. 2025** (Collabra, doi 10.1525/collabra.128178) is the source for US / Argentina /
Colombia / Peru (N=1,650, one polling agency, one Spanish MFV). They ran measurement-invariance and
differential-item-functioning tests and found non-invariance and uniform DIF on many items:
> "cross-cultural comparisons with this tool are restricted."
- **Marques et al. 2020** (Brazil, journal.sjdm.org/19/190809a): São Paulo students judged
individualizing violations more harshly than the US sample, but "we cannot be sure whether these
findings are driven by differences in culture, stimuli, or sample composition."
- **Hopp et al. 2024** (Netherlands, JDM, doi 10.1017/jdm.2024.5): direct comparison is "hindered"
(behavioural data not shared) and divergences "might be more driven by instruments than translational
artifacts."
On top of that, this table is stitched from **five different studies** (Jimenez-Leal LatAm+US, Marques
BR, Hopp NL, Yamada JP, Crone AU undergrads) with different samples, scales, and translations and no
shared anchor. Each country's 6-foundation profile is z-scored within itself, so a near-flat rater (e.g.
Peru, raw spread ~0.37) gets divided by a tiny SD and whipped around by noise. Plotting these as a
culture map produced a confident-looking result that **inverts** Inglehart-Welzel (Latin America came
out more individualizing than the West), a red flag that it measures study/sample differences, not
culture.
So: pooled reference only. The removed MFV culture map + named-axis quadrant, and this reasoning, are in
`docs/RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md` (2026-07-05). -- authored by Claude
+4 -6
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@@ -31,12 +31,10 @@ VALUE_AXES: dict[str, tuple] = {
("loyalty", 1), ("authority", 1), ("purity", 1)]),
("Equality", "Proportionality", [("equality", -1), ("proportionality", 1)]),
),
"mfv": (
("Individualizing", "Binding",
[("care", -1), ("fairness", -1), ("liberty", -1),
("authority", 1), ("loyalty", 1), ("sanctity", 1)]),
("Liberty", "Authority", [("liberty", -1), ("authority", 1)]),
),
# NB: no "mfv" here. The MFV named-axis quadrant was removed: MFV country norms fail cross-country
# measurement invariance (Jimenez-Leal et al. 2025, doi 10.1525/collabra.128178 -- non-invariance +
# DIF, "cross-cultural comparisons with this tool are restricted"), so a cultures map over them
# misleads. MFV keeps only the range plot vs a pooled human reference. See RESEARCH_JOURNAL.md.
"big5": (
# DeYoung's meta-traits are unipolar, but name BOTH ends so every axis reads as a contrast
# (like the others): low Plasticity = reserved/conventional; low Stability = volatile.