Attempts to understand subjectivity have historically involved distinguishing the strengths of subjective methods (e.g., survey ratings from informants) from those of alternative methods (e.g., observational/performance-based tasks). Yet a movement is underway in Psychology that considers the merits of intersubjectivity: Understanding the space between two or more informant’s subjective impressions of a common person or phenomenon. In mental health research, understanding differences between subjective impressions have less to do with informants’ characteristics and more to do with the social environments or contexts germane to the people or phenomena examined. Our article focuses on one relatively understudied social environment: the cultural context. We draw from seminal work on psychological universals, as well as emerging work on cultural norms (i.e., cultural tightness) to understand intersubjectivity effects through a cross-cultural lens. We report a meta-analysis of 314 studies of intersubjectivity effects in mental health, revealing that (a) this work involves independent research teams in more than 30 countries, (b) informants rating a target person’s mental health (e.g., parent and teacher ratings of a child’s behavior) commonly provide diverging estimates of that person’s mental health, and (c) greater convergence between subjective reports relates to a “tighter” or more norms-bound culture. Our article illustrates strategies for understanding divergence between subjective reports. In particular, we highlight theoretical and methodological frameworks for examining patterns of divergence between subjective reports in relation to data from nonsubjective methods. We also describe how research on intersubjectivity informs efforts to improve the interpretability of subjective assessments in multiple subdisciplines in Psychology.

中文翻译：

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改善心理现象的主观评估的可解释性：审查和跨文化的荟萃分析

从历史上看，尝试理解主观性涉及将主观方法（例如，来自举报人的调查评分）的优势与其他方法（例如，基于观察/基于绩效的任务）的优势区分开来。然而，心理学中正在进行一项考虑主体间性优点的运动：了解两个或更多告密者对一个普通人或现象的主观印象之间的间隔。在心理健康研究中，了解主观印象之间的差异与信息提供者的特征无关，而与与所考察的人或现象密切相关的社会环境或环境有关。我们的文章集中于一种相对未被充分研究的社会环境：文化背景。我们从关于心理普遍性的开创性工作中汲取灵感，以及有关文化规范（即文化紧密性）的新兴工作，以通过跨文化的视角来理解主体间性的影响。我们报告了314项主体间性对心理健康影响研究的荟萃分析，揭示了（a）这项工作涉及30多个国家的独立研究团队，（b）信息提供者对目标人的心理健康进行了评估（例如，父母和老师的评估（儿童行为的评估）通常会提供对该人心理健康状况的不同估计，并且（c）主观报告之间的更大趋同性与“更紧密的”或更规范的文化有关。本文阐述了用于理解主观报告之间分歧的策略。特别是，我们重点介绍了用于检查主观报告与非主观方法的数据之间的差异模式的理论和方法框架。我们还描述了关于主体间性的研究如何指导提高心理学多个子学科中主观评估的可解释性的努力。