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journal: MFV fails cross-country invariance (Jimenez-Leal 2025) -> drop MFV culture layer

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Co-Authored-By: Claudypoo <288921227+claudypoo@users.noreply.github.com>
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2026-07-05 21:34:41 +08:00
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@@ -806,3 +806,40 @@ don't muddy), and three purely geometric helpers in `maps.py` that work on any m
ticks removed. `plot_ipsative_pca` switched to the same treatment.
Model-star palette is disjoint from the zone colours so a star never reads as a zone.
-- authored by Claude
## 2026-07-05 -- MFV cross-country comparison is invalid (drop the culture layer)
Built the MFV named-axis quadrant map (value_coords_contrast: signed z-contrast, since
MFV's compositional relative-emphasis profile makes the survey `1 - p` complement
meaningless). It rendered fine and the STEER story is right (+Authority pushes the base
model into the binding/authority corner, which no human sample occupies -- the base is the
only point with positive authority emphasis, y=+0.61). But the COUNTRY layer inverts the
known Inglehart-Welzel pattern: Latin America comes out MORE individualizing than the West
(LatAm mean binding -0.81 vs West -0.63; Brazil/Argentina/Colombia beat Netherlands/
Australia/US; only Peru is a low-individualizing LatAm exception). wassname caught my two
wrong framings ("just the US", "Netherlands solidly individualizing") -- the real pattern is
West-below-LatAm, his original instinct.
Chased the source papers. This is not merely noisy stitching; the instrument FAILS
cross-country comparison and the authors say so:
- Jimenez-Leal et al. 2025 (Collabra, doi 10.1525/collabra.128178) -- the source for our
US/Argentina/Colombia/Peru, N=1650 one polling agency, one Spanish MFV. Ran measurement
invariance + DIF tests: non-invariance and uniform DIF on many items; "cross-cultural
comparisons with this tool are restricted." So even WITHIN one study/scale the US-vs-LatAm
and Peru-vs-Argentina orderings are not trustworthy.
- Marques 2020 (Brazil, SP university students): Brazilians judged individualizing
violations MORE harshly than the US sample; "cannot be sure whether these findings are
driven by differences in culture, stimuli, or sample composition."
- Hopp 2024 (Netherlands, Prolific N=586): direct comparison "hindered" (data not shared);
divergences "might be more driven by instruments than translational artifacts."
Mechanism on top of that: each country's 8-point profile is z-scored across its 6 foundations,
so a near-flat rater (Peru, raw spread ~0.37 vs Argentina ~0.67) gets divided by a tiny SD
and whipped around by measurement noise. Five different studies (Jimenez-Leal, Marques, Hopp,
Yamada JP, Crone AU undergrads) with different samples/scales/translations, no shared anchor,
then z-scored, manufactures a confident cultural inversion out of data the authors say can't
be compared.
Decision: MFV is NOT a cultures map. Keep it for the MODEL's relative-emphasis steer only.
Plan below. MFQ-2/Big5/Humour use single-source country tables and are unaffected (TODO: still
worth confirming each is single-source + comparable). -- authored by Claude