Psychosocial values as a system: Social representations of gypsy women among Brazilians

From the paradigm of the three phases of Theory of Social Representations, the study had as objective to analyze how the social representations of gypsy women anchor themselves in the psychosocial values. 318 non-Roma subjects of Brazilian nationality, aged between 17 and 54 years (M = 22.4; SD = 6.17) participated in the study. Data collection was carried out through the application of questionnaires in higher education institutions, based on an instrument consisting of the following information topics: Socio-demographic data, free association technique for the term gypsy woman inducer and self-attributed psychosocial values. The data were processed using the factorial matching analysis (τ = 14.03, IEF1 = 4.02, IEF2 = 3.62) and the cluster analysis, using SPAD-T software. The results indicated an association between religious values (Cluster 2) and the mystical image of the gypsy as a seer (V-test = 2.6), the post-materialists (Cluster1: Post-materialists social/V-test = -2.6;: Individual and professional post-materialists/V-test = -3.2) related to the idea of dance and joy, while materialists and hedonists represented the gypsy woman both from the image of seduction and cheating (V-test = -4.4 ). Psychosocial anchoring is discussed through the values as a resource to the analysis of the integrated system-metasystem process in the field of study of social representations.