GYre0ePJhZ Posted July 14, 2014 Posted July 14, 2014 I have only read the abstract of the article so I can not say whether it is founded on good science, although the impact factor of the journal is pretty high (1.348 in 2011) which generally means good quality. However, it is from 1990 (meaning old), it has cross-sectional design which can not prove causality, and the sample size is not that great. Nonetheless, thought it had interesting information and theories that you might find intriguing too. From the abstract: In this paper we argue that attachment theory, as developed by John Bowlby and refined and extended by a host of other psychological researchers, offers a potentially powerful theoretical framework for the psychology of religion. A wide range of research findings concerning such topics as images of God, conversion, and prayer can be conceptually integrated within this framework. An exploratory investigation was conducted of the relationship between individual differences in respondents' childhood attachments to their parents and their adult religious beliefs and involvement. A sample of 213 respondents to a newspaper survey on love completed a follow-up mail survey concerning their religious beliefs and family backgrounds. Multiple regression analyses revealed that certain aspects of adult religiosity, particularly beliefs about God and having a personal relationship with God, can be predicted from the interaction of childhood attachment classification and parental religiousness. Respondents who classified their childhood relationships with their mothers as avoidant (one of two insecure patterns of attachment) were more religious as adults, according to several measures, than were those classifying their childhood relationships as secure or anxious/ambivalent; however, this pattern held only when the parents were reported as having been relatively nonreligious. Respondents in the avoidant category also reported significantly higher rates of sudden religious conversions during both adolescence and adulthood, irrespective of parental religiosity. These results suggest that God and religion may function in a compensatory role for people with a history of avoidant attachment; that is, God may serve as a substitute attachment figure. Link: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1386461?uid=3738744&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104330173367
Recommended Posts