REVISITING THE INNER WORKINGS OF ATTACHMENT TO GOD IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

The present study aimed to re-examine the mixed literature surrounding patterns of attachment to God and parents (correspondence and compensation). This was done by testing internal working models (IWMs), the psychological mechanism behind attachment, by measuring the perceived characteristics differences across attachment figures and the frequencies of God focused and non-God focused prayers. A total of 267 participants aged 18 to 30 who professed belief in God completed an anonymous online survey publicised in Singapore. Using median splits, participants were organised into two types of non-correspondence groups and three types of correspondence groups. The results showed that non-correspondence groups did not uniformly have greater characteristics differences between parents and God than correspondence groups. The characteristics differences between father and God were also consistently greater for individuals whose attachment to God corresponded with only one parent, regardless of whichever parent. Finally, the relationship between God focused prayers and attachment to God was found to be stronger than that with non-God focused prayers, but participants who portrayed the compensation trend did not perform more God focused prayers than participants who also reported relatively more secure attachment to God. Possible explanations and implications for the research on attachment to God were discussed further.