Abstract

PEREIRA, Maria Gouveia; AMARAL, Virgílio  and  SOARES, Susana. Identidades sociais e representações sociais dos adolescentes acerca da SIDA . Aná. Psicológica [online]. 1997, vol.15, n.4, pp.617-636. ISSN 0870-8231.

The porpose of this investigation is to study the adolescent's social representations about aids, and how the adolescent's social identification can influence them. About social representations we study sociological ancorage (variable sex), following the ideas of Doise (1992), who says that the positions that subjects have in social relations influence the formation of representations. We also study the psychological ancorage (representation of intergroup relations) by activating the categories of: heterosexuals, homosexuals and drugs addicted, in appropriate sentences; bringing to mind the relations with a non risky group (heterosexuals) and with groups thought as risky (homosexuals and drug addicted). The goal of this investigation is to study the influence of identities in social representations, according to Vala (1990) social identities influence and explain the subject's social representation of some object; we study which variables (sex, distances to groups - ingroup (friends) and outgroups (homosexuals and drug addicted)) predict adolescent's representations about aids, studying adolescents with high identification and adolescents with low identification to their friends. The subjects of this study are 300 adolescents with ages between 14 and 17 years old; 150 of adolescents are girls and 150 are boys. The questionnaire is divided in two parts, one about social identification (studying Euclidean distances between self - ingroup and self - outgroup) and a second part about aids representations. This second part of the questionnaire begins with a little story about a subject infected with aids, the subject is homosexual, heterosexual or drug addicted in each story. Each story was given to read to 100 adolescents, 50 girls and 50 boys. The adolescent's representations of this study link to dimensions as: infection by social contact, risky groups, infection by sexual relations, discrimination and intergroup relations and border groups. This dimensions link with a model of aids representations organisation according to Deschamps and others (1992). In this model and in our adolescents representations about aids, the infection by social contact, body fluids and the link with risky groups are increased. When we articulate adolescents identity with aids representation, we verify that adolescents with high identification to their friends don't think them as having risky conducts or being infected. For the adolescents that identify less with their friends, the homosexual group is the one that explains the dimensions about infection by social contact, intergroup relations, risky groups and discrimination. The results reveal differences between girls and boys and also between adolescents with high and low identification to their friend, regarding the organisation of aids representations. This results should be considered in aids prevention.

Keywords : Adolescence; social representations; social identities; AIDS.

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