Attachment Representations and Behaviors Toward God Amid Spiritual Struggles: An Experimental Study

Representations of God involve the activation of internal working models of attachment. Spiritual struggles, defined as tension or strain centered around the sacred, could involve a rupture in the subject’s relationship with God. Thus, recent work to identify behavioral patterns in one’s relationship with God amid spiritual struggles (i.e., approach, disengagement, protest, suppression) may be extended by investigating how attachment representations are associated with these behavioral patterns. This experimental study used an attachment security priming paradigm to investigate whether baseline attachment avoidance or anxiety would moderate the effect of induced felt security on protest behavior. There was an interaction of the experimental effect of induced attachment security on protest behavior for attachment avoidance but not attachment anxiety. Therefore, protest motivations increased along with felt security, especially among subjects with higher baseline attachment avoidance (if they completed the security induction). For individuals whose spirituality includes a focusing on a personal relationship with God, protest may be a consequence of increasing felt security in this relationship amid spiritual struggles. These results have implications for clinical practice with religiously affiliated clients.