Abstract

CAMARGO, Brigido Vizeu; BERTOLDO, Raquel Bohn  and  BARBARA, Andréa. Social representations of AIDS and altruism. Estud. pesqui. psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.9, n.3, pp. 0-0. ISSN 1808-4281.

The study aimed the investigation of the social representations of AIDS among adolescents, as well as their estimations of other adolescents’ representations. The data were gathered from two opened questions: 1) “What do you think of AIDS?” and 2) “What do you think youngsters your age think of AIDS?”, analyzed by the software ALCESTE. 261 high school students took part in the study, from whom 50.6% were females. The results pointed that AIDS is represented as a social and biomedical problem concerning the intimacy. The representation of what do the other youngsters make of AIDS also emphasized the biomedical aspect, distinguished by the relationship established between contamination by the HIV and the lack of preoccupation with prevention and the youth irresponsibility. It was concluded that adolescents tend to project over the others of their group negative elements involving issues concerning their own emotions and risk perceptions of the disease.

Keywords : AIDS; Adolescents; Social representation; Altruism.

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