The concept of love: an exploratory study with a sample of young Brazilians

Abstract

Studying love scientifically is an arduous task due to methodological difficulties and conceptual improprieties intrinsically related to this type of investigation. Is love, as a psychological phenomenon, capable of being scientifically studied by psychology? The present study proposed to study love in a less subjective way and had as objectives: (1) to identify the characteristics most commonly attributed and / or associated to the word love by Brazilian subjects of different ages and social conditions and (2) to verify if there are statistically significant differences depending on the variables: gender, age group and education level. Six hundred subjects participated in this study (390 women - 65%; 209 men - 34.83%), with an average age of 23.82 years, distributed in seven groups according to the city of origin of the collection and the education level of the participants. From the collected data, 14 categories were created, which were independently assessed by five judges chosen by the proponent of this study. The analysis of the results, based on the theoretical view of the concepts, allowed to verify that: (1) over time, people associate love more with positive representations and less with romantic, family and friendships; (2) women associate love more than men, related to friendship, family, animals and as a source of positive emotions, attitudes and behaviors; (3) the higher the level of education of the participants, the more they associate love with positive aspects.