Pehr Granqvist

Religiousness and Perceived Childhood Attachment: On the Question of Compensation or Correspondence

Religiousness and Perceived Childhood Attachment : On the Question of Compensation or Correspondence

Religiousness and Perceived Childhood Attachment: Profiling Socialized Correspondence and Emotional Compensation

Religiousness and Perceived Childhood Attachment: : Profiling Socialized Correspondence and Emotional Compensation

Religion as Attachment: Normative Processes and Individual Differences

The authors review findings from the psychology of religion showing that believers’ perceived relationships with God meet the definitional criteria for attachment relationships. They also review evidence for associations between aspects of religion and individual differences in interpersonal attachment security and insecurity. They focus on two developmental pathways to religion. The first is a “compensation” pathway involving distress regulation in the context of insecure attachment and past experiences of insensitive caregiving. Research suggests that religion as compensation might set in motion an “earned security” process for individuals who are insecure with respect to attachment. The second is a “correspondence” pathway based on secure attachment and past experiences with sensitive caregivers who were religious. The authors also discuss conceptual limitations of a narrow religion-as-attachment model and propose a more inclusive framework that accommodates concepts such as mindfulness and “nonattachment” from nontheistic religions such as Buddhism and New Age spirituality.

Attachment and Religiosity in Adolescence: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evaluations

The study offers the first investigation of cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between attachment and religiosity with adolescent participants. Adolescence is a life period linked to attachment transitions and religious changes. The research was conducted to help resolve inconsistent results from previous cross-sectional versus longitudinal studies and studies on attachment to parents versus peer attachment. Time 1 questionnaire data was collected from 196 Swedish adolescents (M age = 16 years); 143 participants completed the 15-month follow-up. Results from the cross-sectional analyses generally supported the socialized correspondence and emotional compensation hypotheses, particularly in relation to attachment to mother. Results from the longitudinal analyses were more mixed. The discussion integrates the hypotheses with Kirkpatrick’s previous proposal, argues for a main focus on attachment to parents rather than peer attachment, and offers suggestions for future attachment and religion studies.

RESEARCH: "Religious Conversion and Perceived Childhood Attachment: A Meta-Analysis"

In this article we review previous work on religious conversions, relate this work to attachment system dynamics, and present a meta-analysis of results from 11 cross-national questionnaire studies (N = 1465) that have investigated links between religious conversions and perceived childhood attachment history with parents. Two general hypotheses derived from attachment theory were tested. Based on the compensation hypothesis, it was predicted that sudden religious conversions would be associated on average with insecure, rather than secure, attachment histories. Based on the 2-level correspondence hypothesis, it was predicted that nonsudden conversions and gradual religious changes would be associated with a secure attachment history. Both predictions were supported in the meta-analyses, with small to medium effect sizes. It was concluded that attachment theory is a valuable framework for integrating previous findings and guiding future research on religious conversions, but that several methodological improvements should be made in future research.

Seeking Security in the New Age: On Attachment and Emotional Compensation

The purpose of the present cross-sectional questionnaire study was to construct a comprehensive and reliable scale to assess new age orientation as a continuous individual difference variable. Given large increases in new age orientation in Sweden in recent years, an additional purpose was to test our emotional compensation hypothesis by studying connections of retrospective parental and adult romantic attachment in relation to new age orientation, emotionally-based religiosity, and socialization-based religiosity, as well as to study links between attachment and several aspects of spiritual change. The study group included 193 participants from upper secondary school classes, Christian youth organizations, and new age establishments in Stockholm, Sweden. The new age orientation scale was shown to be unidimensional according to an exploratory factor analysis, and to possess adequate reliability and construct validity. In line with the emotional compensation predictions, new age orientation was directly linked to attachment insecurity and emotionally-based religiosity and inversely related to socialization-based religiosity. Attachment insecurity was also linked to the experience of spiritual changes, whereas most findings pertaining to characteristics of spiritual change did not support predictions. In general, unlike perceived attachment to parents, adult romantic attachment did not display the predicted pattern of results. It was concluded that attachment theory may make an important contribution by highlighting predisposing factors for new age orientation, as representing one aspect of the emotional compensation profile, but that several methodological improvements are necessary in future studies.

The Correspondence between Attachment to Parents and God: Three Experiments Using Subliminal Separation Cues:

Attachment theoretical studies have increased our understanding of the socioemotional foundations for religious development. However, because these studies have been correlational and based on self-reports, they are vulnerable to concerns of self-presentation bias and lack of basis for causal inference. Three subliminal stimulation experiments were therefore performed, where activation of the attachment system was attempted by way of unconsciously administered separation stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 3 (N = 29 and 89), the separation stimulus alluded to God, and in Experiment 2 (N = 47), it alluded to mother. Responses were moderated by perceived attachment history with parents in all experiments. Participants with secure histories increased in religious attachment behaviors, whereas those with insecure histories decreased following attachment system activation compared with control stimulation. There also were suggestions of experimental group increase in proximity seeking in relation to God. The main conclusion supports correspondence between internal working models of parents and God.

Religiosity, Adult Attachment, and Why "Singles" are More Religious

The purpose of this cross-sectional, questionnaire study was to investigate the links of adult attachment style and relationship status to various indexes of religiosity. The sample consisted of 156 students at Uppsala University, Sweden. In line with a hypothesis of concurrent correspondence between adult attachment style and religiosity, results showed a modest positive association between adult attachment security and those religiosity variables that tapped features of the individuals relationship with God. In support of a compensation hypothesis, singles, as compared to lovers, were found to be more religiously active, perceive a personal relationship with God, have experienced changes implying increased importance of religious beliefs, and have experienced a religiosity that is based on affect regulation to a larger extent. It was argued that an attachment framework focusing on other aspects of attachment than individual differences in attachment quality may be equally fruitfully implemented within the psychology of religion as the individual differences perspective, and that the former is a necessary complement to the sociologically invoked concept of social deprivation.

Examining Relations among Attachment, Religiosity, and New Age Spirituality Using the Adult Attachment Interview.

This study was the first to examine relations between attachment and religion-spirituality in adults using a developmentally validated attachment assessment, the Adult Attachment Interview. Security of attachment was expected to be linked to a religiosity-spirituality that is socially based on the parental relationships and reflects extrapolation of attachment experiences with sensitive parents to perceived relationships with a loving God. Insecurity of attachment was expected to be related to religiosity- spirituality via emotional compensation for states of insecurity. Participants (N=84; 40% men; mean age=29 years) were drawn from religious-spiritual groups. Religiousness-spirituality was assessed with questionnaires. Results generally supported the hypotheses (ps<.05). Estimates of parental loving were linked to socially based religiosity, loving God images, and gradual religious changes occurring at early ages and in life contexts indicating a positive influence of close relationships. Estimates of parental rejection and role reversal were related to New Age spirituality and sudden-intense religious changes occurring in life contexts of turmoil. Current attachment state of mind was generally unrelated to traditional religiosity, but current preoccupation, unresolved- disorganized, and cannot classify states were associated with New Age spirituality.

Longitudinal Predictions of Religious Change in Adolescence: Contributions from the Interaction of Attachment and Relationship Status

The purpose of the study was to test our (Granqvist, 2002a) emotional compensation and two-level correspondence hypotheses by examining longitudinal associations of attachment and change in romantic relationship status in relation to religious change. Questionnaires were filled out by 196 adolescents in Stockholm (mean age = 16 years); 72% completed the 15-month follow-up. Virtually no main effects on religious change as a function of either attachment or relationship status were obtained. However, in line with the interaction predictions, an insecure attachment history and insecure adult attachment in romantic relationships predicted increased religiousness for those who had experienced a separation and decreased religiousness for those who had formed a new romantic relationship. The pattern of relations for a secure attachment history and romantic attachment was in the opposite direction. The findings imply that attachment predicts religious change primarily in the context of changes in romantic relationships. These findings may explain why previous studies in the separate domains of attachment and relationship status in relation to religiousness have yielded weak or inconsistent results, and suggest that the two fields need to be integrated. Implications for romantic attachment theory and research in general are discussed.