Love and Intimacy in Canada: a latent profile analysis of conceptions of intimacy endorsed by Canadians


Chiara Piazzesi, Université du Québec à Montréal

Love relationships have undergone important transformations in recent decades, but we still know very little concerning if and how people’s ideas and values regarding intimate relationships have changed on matters such as the place of love in a relationship, the meaning of commitment, the importance of sexual and affective exclusivity, and so on. This knowledge gap is crucial for scholarship, but also for counseling, general awareness, and policymaking. Our paper will present results from the MACLIC project (Mapping Contemporary Love and Intimacy Ideals in Canada), whose main objective is to document attitudes towards traditional and non-traditional conceptions of intimacy among the Canadian general population. After collecting data through a pan-Canadian online survey, we conducted a latent profile analysis (N=3313) using four indicators to measure the endorsement of traditional and modern conceptions of intimacy. Our model consists in five profiles (“All-In Modern”, “Mostly Modern”, “Cautiously Modern”, “Reasonably Romantic” and “All-In Romantic”), situated on a spectrum going from very modern to very traditional conceptions of intimacy. We will present the model, describe and interpret how the five profiles differ with regard to the indicators, illustrate the sociodemographic correlates for each profile, and discuss the significance and implications of our findings.

Non-presenting author: Martin Blais, Université du Québec à Montréal

This paper will be presented at the following session: