Attachment to God, Psychological Need Satisfaction, and Psychological Well-Being among Christians

Abstract

Human attachment relationships are considered to be foundational to psychological well-being (Fonagy, 1999; Warren, Huston, Egeland, & Sroufe, 1997) and, by extension, attachment to God is often considered foundational to psychological well-being amongst Christian believers (Kirkpatrick, 1999; Miner, 2009). However, studies of psychological need satisfaction by different attachment figures (La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000) suggest that experiences in which basic psychological needs are satisfied are conducive to more secure attachment relationships, and thus, to enhanced psychological well-being. This paper tests two contrasting models of attachment to God, need satisfaction, and well-being: the Attachment Security Primacy Model which holds that attachment security facilitates experiences of psychological need satisfaction and thence increased well-being; and the Need Satisfaction Primacy Model which holds that experiences of psychological need satisfaction facilitate attachment security and thence increased well-being. Using self-report data from 225 Australian Christian participants, Structural Equation Modeling indicated that the Need Satisfaction Primacy Model fit the data better than competing models. Implications for augmenting theories of attachment to God and providing contexts in which people can experience God as meeting basic needs are discussed.

Relational spirituality and quality of life 2007 to 2017: an integrative research review

“…Although study findings show evidence of the links between RS and QoL in medical-health research for the last decade, we were unable to retrieve some studies related to RS and QoL during our initial literature search due to indexing problems and date of publication. After conducting a manual search of related articles reporting on the links between RS and QoL, we found some related studies (e.g., [ 16 , 37 , 79 – 83 ]), but were not able to report them because they were either not indexed in the selected databases (i.e., PubMed, ScienceDirect, and PsycINFO), using a different conceptualisation of QoL (e.g., levels of emotional distress), or were published after our deadline of literature search (i.e., March 2017). However, the results from these “missing” studies also support the salutary effects of an attachment-based model of RS on levels of psychological wellbeing.…”

Adult Attachment Orientations and Social Networking Site Addiction: The Mediating Effects of Online Social Support and the Fear of Missing Out

“…Studies have found that attachment is linked to psychological needs, which are correlated with FOMO. Specifically, both attachment anxiety and avoidance have been related to satisfying basic psychological needs (LaGuardia et al, 2000;Wei et al, 2005;Felton and Jowett, 2013;Miner et al, 2014). Other studies found that both anxious and avoidant attachment dimensions positively predicted basic psychological need satisfaction (Wei et al, 2005).…”

Anxious and Avoidant Attachment to God Predict Moral Foundations beyond Adult Attachment

“…In a sample of Chinese Christians living in America, Wei, Ku, Chen, Wade, Liao, and Guo, (2012) found secure attachment to God to be positively correlated with life satisfaction and positive affect. In one sample of adult Australians, Miner (2009) found attachment to God to be positively associated with existential well-being and negatively related to anxiety, and in a second sample of adult Australians, Miner, Dowson, and Malone (2014) found God attachment anxiety to be positively correlated with stress, and both God attachment anxiety and God attachment avoidance to be positively correlated with depression and anxiety.…”