Two Dimensions of Attachment to God and Their Relation to Affect, Religiosity, and Personality Constructs

In this study we sought to address several limitations of previous research on attachment theory and religion by (1) developing a dimensional attachment to God scale, and (2) demonstrating that dimensions of attachment to God are predictive of measures of affect and personality after controlling for social desirability and other related dimensions of religiosity. Questionnaire measures of these constructs were completed by a sample of university students and community adults (total n = 374). Consistent with prior research on adult romantic attachment, two dimensions of attachment to God were identified: avoidance and anxiety. After statistically controlling for social desirability, intrinsic religiousness, doctrinal orthodoxy, and loving God image, anxious attachment to God remained a significant predictor of neuroticism, negative affect, and (inversely) positive affect; avoidant attachment to God remained a significant inverse predictor of religious symbolic immortality and agreeableness. These findings are evidence that correlations between attachment to God and measures of personality and affect are not merely byproducts of confounding effects of socially desirable responding or other dimensions of religiosity. Since the publication of Bowlby’s (1969/1982) first volume more than three decades ago, attachment theory has been enormously influential in the study of social development in children as well as adults (Shaver and Cassidy 1999). More recently, Kirkpatrick (1992, 1999) proposed that the theory provides a powerful framework for understanding many aspects of religious belief, particularly with respect to perceived relationships with God. In support of this idea, numerous studies have shown that religious beliefs and behaviors are related cross-sectionally to individual differences in adult attachment experience (Kirkpatrick 1998; Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1992), and that religious change is empirically predicted longitudinally from retrospective reports of childhood attachment experience (Granqvist and Hagekull 1999; Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1990) and previous adult attachment experience (Kirkpatrick 1997, 1999). A central focus of the attachment-theoretical approach to religion concerns perceived attachments to God. Research has shown that such individual differences correlate inversely with loneliness, depression, and similar constructs (Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1990; Kirkpatrick, Shillito, and Kellas 1999). However, these findings suffer from several important limitations. First, individual differences in attachment to God have heretofore been measured using a crude categorical self-report measure with unknown reliability. Second, these findings are open to alternative interpretations in terms of potentially confounding factors, particularly (1) social desirability response sets and (2) other dimensions of religiosity that might be correlated with the attachment to God measure. The present research was designed to address these issues by developing a multidimensional measure of attachment to God, and demonstrating that these dimensions are predictive of measures of personality and affect after controlling for social desirability as well as other dimensions of religiosity related to attachment to God.