Kirkpatrick (2005) argues that perceived relationships between believers and God often tend to meet the established criteria for characterizing attachment relationships. In his findings he suggested that believers strive to establish and maintain a sense of proximity or closeness to God, most notably through prayer as a safe haven when distressed (Kirkpatrick, 2005). Kirkpatrick and Shaver, 1990) derived two views on how individual differences in attachment may relate to religiousness, this was based on Bowlby’s (1973) notion of working models which were seen to extend to religion, in particular to the individual’s beliefs about and perceived relationship with God. The implication of this mental model is that securely attached individuals possess positive working models of themselves and others; come to view God in a similar manner as a reliable, secure base with where one can have an enduring personal relationship (Kirkpatrick, 2005). On the other hand, insecure individuals may develop an attachment to God or other divine figures as surrogates for unsatisfactory human attachment figures they have had in the past (Kirkpatrick, 2005). Further, Kirkpatrick and Shaver (1990) found that people who have an insecure-attachment history were more likely to have experienced sudden religious conversion and were also more religious in general.
The secure attachment, religion reflects partial adoption of a sensitive caregiver’s religion (Granqvist & Hagekull, 1999), inspired by Bowlby’s (1973, 1980) and Mary (1991) characterizations of the working models of secure and insecure individuals (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008). The securely attached individuals may possess a coherent or singular God representation that is accessible at both conscious and non-conscious levels (Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008). The insecurely attached individuals may possess an incoherent or multiple God representation that may be functional only at conscious levels (Kirkpatrick & Shaver (1990). Religion emerges from a higher-order which acts as a control effort to regulate distress that runs counter to how God is perceived at non-conscious levels (Granqvist, 2010).
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Video on application of Attachment Theory to Spirituality/Religion