PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE LOVE ATTITUDE SCALE (LAS) AND THE REDUCED TRIANGULAR SCALE OF LOVE (STLS-R) FOR HOMOAFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPSLove; Homosexuality; Homoaffective relationships; Psychometrics.
From Greek tragedies to contemporaneity, love and intimate relationships play an important role in human existence. Scientific studies on love set to gain prominence from the twentieth century, particularly in modern psychology. However, at national and international level, even today such studies are not representative of same-sex couples. In this sense, this dissertation aims to investigate the aspects of same-sex love relationships in a sample of 1,380 Brazilian men and women. To this end, two independent studies were carried out. The first study based on the Theory of Colors of Love by Canadian psychologist John Alan Lee and aimed to present psychometric properties of the Love Attitude Scale (LAS). The second was based on the Triangular Theory of Love, by the North American psychologist Robert Sternberg and aimed to present psychometric evidence of the Reduced Triangular Scale of Love (STLS-R). Exploratory (EFA), Confirmatory (CFA) and Multigroup (MCFA) Factorial Analyzes, Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and internal consistency calculations were performed. The results indicate that the instruments have good psychometric properties. From the measures adapted in the target population of this study, it was found that homoaffective relationships are experienced from a variety of possibilities of style of love (study 1) and relationship structures (study 2), corroborating the fact that the intimates relations are structured on similarities bases, independent of sexual orientation. Furthermore, this study contributes to the debate on the sociocultural construction of the determined love style, indicating that a context of stigmatization and repression of sexuality can subject such people to ambivalent and confused feelings about how, how much and why they love.