Resumen

COSTA, Vanuzia  y  FERNANDES, Sheyla Christine Santos. What does adolescents think about love and sex?a study on social representation perspective. Psicol. Soc. [online]. 2012, vol.24, n.2, pp. 391-401. ISSN 0102-7182.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-71822012000200017.

The aim of this study was to understand the social representations of love and sex to teenagers from a northeastern capital city and analyze the relations between socio-demographic data and these representations. 301 adolescents took part in this study  ranging from 12 and 18 years old (57% females and 43% males). The data was collected using a socio-demographic questionnaire and the word free association test about two incentive words, "love" and "sex". The categorization of the data around the thematic axis pointed to fellowship, care and feeling as a representation of love, and pleasure, feeling and prevention as the representations of sex. The data showed that women represents the love and sex more associated to feelings; the younger adolescents and the school-level lower represent the love associated to companionship and sex to prevention.

Palabras llave : adolescence; love; sex; social representations.