Showing papers by "Wade C. Rowatt published in 2002"
TL;DR: Kirkpatrick and Shaver as discussed by the authors found that attachment to God is a predictor of negative affect, negative affect and positive affect, while avoidance and anxiety were associated with positive affect.
Abstract: In this study we sought to address several limitations of previous research on attachment theory and religion by (1) developing a dimensional attachment to God scale, and (2) demonstrating that dimensions of attachment to God are predictive of measures of affect and personality after controlling for social desirability and other related dimensions of religiosity. Questionnaire measures of these constructs were completed by a sample of university students and community adults (total n = 374). Consistent with prior research on adult romantic attachment, two dimensions of attachment to God were identified: avoidance and anxiety. After statistically controlling for social desirability, intrinsic religiousness, doctrinal orthodoxy, and loving God image, anxious attachment to God remained a significant predictor of neuroticism, negative affect, and (inversely) positive affect; avoidant attachment to God remained a significant inverse predictor of religious symbolic immortality and agreeableness. These findings are evidence that correlations between attachment to God and measures of personality and affect are not merely byproducts of confounding effects of socially desirable responding or other dimensions of religiosity. Since the publication of Bowlby’s (1969/1982) first volume more than three decades ago, attachment theory has been enormously influential in the study of social development in children as well as adults (Shaver and Cassidy 1999). More recently, Kirkpatrick (1992, 1999) proposed that the theory provides a powerful framework for understanding many aspects of religious belief, particularly with respect to perceived relationships with God. In support of this idea, numerous studies have shown that religious beliefs and behaviors are related cross-sectionally to individual differences in adult attachment experience (Kirkpatrick 1998; Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1992), and that religious change is empirically predicted longitudinally from retrospective reports of childhood attachment experience (Granqvist and Hagekull 1999; Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1990) and previous adult attachment experience (Kirkpatrick 1997, 1999). A central focus of the attachment-theoretical approach to religion concerns perceived attachments to God. Research has shown that such individual differences correlate inversely with loneliness, depression, and similar constructs (Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1990; Kirkpatrick, Shillito, and Kellas 1999). However, these findings suffer from several important limitations. First, individual differences in attachment to God have heretofore been measured using a crude categorical self-report measure with unknown reliability. Second, these findings are open to alternative interpretations in terms of potentially confounding factors, particularly (1) social desirability response sets and (2) other dimensions of religiosity that might be correlated with the attachment to God measure. The present research was designed to address these issues by developing a multidimensional measure of attachment to God, and demonstrating that these dimensions are predictive of measures of personality and affect after controlling for social desirability as well as other dimensions of religiosity related to attachment to God.
336 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the association between religiousness and humility, and found that intrinsic religiousness was associated with an increase in the tendency to rate the self as more adherent to biblical commandments than others.
Abstract: This research examined the association between religiousness and humility. Participants in Studies 1 and 2 completed measures of religiousness, socially desirable responding, and their own and other people’s adherence to biblical commandments. Participants in Study 2 also rated how characteristic nonreligious positive and negative trait terms were of the self and others. Humility was operationalized as the magnitude of difference between individuals’ evaluations of self and other. Overvaluing the self in relation to others or undervaluing others in relation to the self was considered evidence of less humility. Participants rated the self to be more adherent to biblical commandments than others (the holier-than-thou effect) and rated the self to be more positive and less negative than others (the self-other bias). In both studies, intrinsic religiousness was associated with an increase in the tendency to rate the self as more adherent to biblical commandments than others. Quest was associated with a slight decrease in the magnitude of the holier-than-thou effect. Religious motivations did not account for unique variation in the general self-other bias. Irrespective of motivations for being religious, however, highly religious people (i.e., upper thirds on general religiousness and religious fundamentalism) more so than less religious people (i.e., lower thirds on general religiousness and religious fundamentalism) rated the self to be better on nonreligious attributes than others.
96 citations