In your opinion does this chart have useful predictive validity in grasping the essence of different cultures or is it just a package of stereotypes?
I have no information on the Lewis Model, but cannot resist this oldie:
In Heaven, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the policemen are British, the lovers are Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the policemen German, the lovers are Swiss, and it is all organized by the Italians.
Quite apart from the merits of the claims, how, precisely, is this a model? That is, what does it purport to predict/explain, and how can I use the model to make predictions and explanations of my own?
That is what makes a model a model. Just coming up with a characteristic on a spectrum (here, single-focus to multi-focus) doesn’t make something a model. No more than my observation that some people are taller and some people are shorter makes that a model.
Even astrology contends that it can make predictions. Does the Lewis model?
Instead, this does seem to borrow from astrology in one significant way: In addition to predictions (horoscopes), astrology also purports to explain truths about the characteristics of each sign. These truths are of a generalized, multifarious nature so that anyone will see some resemblance to themselves (and others) in each sign. By doing this, people focus on the accuracy of these general truths and overlook that the horoscopes are correct only about as often as chance.
The Lewis model looks like it operates in the same way: Come up with a basic classification scheme that repackages pre-existing stereotypes and people won’t mind that the predictions made on the basis of the model seem to be about as accurate as a coin flip.
It’s based on external perception, not average or collective trait.
Read it yesterday. Wondered how he managed to get “Indians” as a single culture.
Didn’t understand how he made up the word “multi-active” or why it was a triangular spectrum.
Figured it wasnt worth the trouble to try to understand it deeper and dropped it.
He has the Americans next to the Germans as “cool, collected planners”. Clearly, Lewis is bogarting the good shit.
Dude left out the last-momenters: don’t plan, leave everything for tomorrow, and on those occasions in which the street of tomorrow manages to become Today Alley rather than the more usual Never-ever Square, rush everything in a sudden flurry of activity…
before going back to leaving everything for tomorrow.
From the article:
As an American who has worked in Latin America for many years, I can say that understanding the cultural expectations on both sides can help navigate social and business relationships. Trying to do business in Panama with a Swiss mindset will just drive you crazy.
It does seem interesting to me that the “multi-active” type seems to be correlated with a lack of economic success, as based on the countries/cultures listed.
Yeah, but would it be cause or affect I wonder?
Right, I get the guy has made a claim, in very general terms (i.e., “how others will react to our plans for them” and “mak[ing] certain assumptions as to how they will approach us”), as to what his model can predict/explain.
The reason I keep including these two things as a pair is that I am appealling to the deductive-nomological model (or “covering laws model”) of what a scientific theory is: that is the theory must provide an apparatus that allows us to point to a governing universal law, that together with the specific facts of the case, will allow us to come up with an explanation for phenonema that have already occurred or a prediction of phenomena yet to come. Under the covering law model, a prediction is only a scientific prediction if the narrative of the prediction explains why the forecasted event will happen.
To illustrate:
Non-scientific prediction: Tommorow, X will happen.
Scientific prediction: Today, state of the world S0 holds. Because of a Certain Law of Nature, which states “Whenever states of the world of type T occur, X follows,” and because S0 is a type T state of the world, tomorrow X will happen.
Such a scientific syllogism can be demonstrated to anyone. It does not rely (and this will be an important point) on the syllogist’s gnostic, undemonstrable knowledge of his field.
The Lewis model classifies cultures within a ternary spectrum. It purports to be able to predict things about how people will behave and/or approach us. But where are the model’s covering laws that will enable you or me to make these predictions? They are nowhere; instead one must hire the [del]soothsayers[/del] consultants at Lewis Communications, who will deploy their superior understanding of the subtleties of the Lewis Model to make predictions that we cannot.
This is why I asked not just for what the model claims to predict, but also a description of how I can use to the model to make my own scientific predictions.
Again, the similarities to astrology (and this Lewis Model is little more than an astrology of societies). [del]Virgos[/del] multi-actives act one way; [del]Capricorns[/del] reactives act another way. Etc. Etc.
The real scientific flaw of astrology isn’t that solar system bodies can’t influence things on earth (because, after all, solar system bodies do exert forces at a distance that do influence things on earth), but rather that astrology has no system of covering laws that skeptics can use to derive their own conclusions and prove things true or false. And that’s the flaw with the Lewis Model: like astrology, it’s long on Forer Effect classification schemes, but very quiet on explaining to us, other than hiring out a fortune-teller, as to how to use those classifications.