Abstract

Romantic love myths refer to culturally shared beliefs about love, falling in love and relationships. Their study and evaluation are of utmost importance, given that they have been recognized as a risk factor in dating violence with serious implications for the well-being and mental health of young people. The aim of the present study was therefore to develop a scale to evaluate beliefs about romantic love, establishing evidence of reliability and validity for the interpretation of the scores obtained. An instrumental cross-sectional design was carried out, applying the Multidimensional Romantic Love Myths Scale (MRL-MS) to a sample of 1001 Chilean young people between 18 and 25 years of age. As a result, a scale composed of 40 items assessing 8 interrelated dimensions was obtained, with evidence of validity based on internat structure, adequate levels of reliability, and evidence of metric and scalar invariance between sexes. Finally, the [imitations of the study are discussed and possible applications and guidelines for future research are proposed.