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Part of psychology of religion uses attachment theory to examine individual variance in religiosity. Attachment theory is expanded to include incorporeal religious deities as attachment figures; this is done by showing that the characteristics of attachment relationships exist not only in people, but also in religion. Following this idea, two developmental pathways to religion have been proposed: correspondence and compensation. The correspondence hypothesis states that individual differences in attachment style and religious belief should correspond, while the compensation hypothesis states that religious attachments compensate for other, inadequate, attachment figures.

Attachment theory
Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans and explains how much the parents' relationship with the child influences development. Its most important tenet is that children need to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver, or attachment figure, for social and emotional development to occur normally. Through Mary Ainsworth's work, several attachment styles, or patterns, were identified. These are sometimes grouped into two classes, secure and insecure, where secure attachments are associated with consistent and caring parent-child relationships, while insecure attachments are associated with unresponsive, inconsistent, or overbearing cargivers

Normative aspects
Many researchers find the resemblances between religion and attachment compelling. Support comes from applying the following defining characteristics of attachment relationships to religion: These characteristics underlie many theistic religions; notable examples in Christianity include God, Jesus Christ, and guardian angels. In particular, God is sometimes seen as an ideal attachment figure.
 * Attached person seeks proximity to the caregiver, particularly when frightened or alarmed
 * Caregiver provides care and protection (safe haven)
 * Caregiver provides a sense of security (secure base)
 * Threat of separation causes the attached person anxiety
 * Loss of the attachment figure would cause the attached person grief
 * Caregiver is perceived as stronger and wiser

Proximity maintenance
Many religions have stories of deities coming to earth in physical forms. This physical connection may help to solidify abstract ideas, and the vast majority of, if not all, religions have cites or objects of worship that are attributed to either be closer to deities or to remind people of their closeness (e.g. churches, holy books, crucifixes).

Bowlby promotes a more psychological view of being readily accessible. Omnipresence is a common supernatural quality attributed to gods that provides maximum accessibility to believers, as the caregiver is perceived to always be accessible. Prayer ties into this this very well, and is probably the most direct and salient way to attain closeness to God. In short, religions facilitate gods' proximity and accessibility in many ways.

Safe haven
In accordance with Bowlby's three classes of stimuli that activate attachment (alarming events, illness or injury, and separation or threat of separation from attachment figures), people are most likely to "turn to their gods in times of trouble and crisis." Furthermore, many cite reasons for doing so that closely match said classes of stimuli, namely "illness, disability, and other negative life events that cause both mental and physical distress; the anticipated or actual death of friends and relatives; and dealing with an adverse life situation."

Secure base
A reliable attachment figure acts as a secure base, allowing the attached individual to confidently explore. Bowlby puts this well when he said, "when an individual is confident that an attachment figure will be available to him whenever he desires it, that person will be much less prone to either intense or chronic fear than will an individual who for any reason has no such confidence."

The thought that religion can provide believers with a sense security and confidence in their everyday lives is not new, and the functions of a secure base may be part of the reason. With God as a reliable attachment figure, hence a secure base, it seems likely that people would feel more confident and secure in their everyday lives. Indeed, there are many examples of religious imagery and analogies that suggest this relationship.

Separation and loss
As an example of a religious deity, the Christian God is sometimes seen as an ideal attachment figure because of the inherent inseparability of the relationship: He is always everywhere. Due to this, it is far more common for separation to seem to come from the believer, or ex-believer, rather than from God. Simply, this involves the loss of belief in the existence of God, or an image of God. However, there are cases of separation seeming to stem from God, rather than believers. This is often referred to as a "dark night of the soul" or a "wilderness experience." In short, believers feel as though their god has abandoned them.

This relationship dynamic can make the fourth and fifth criteria difficult to gauge, as it's unclear if the separating party is likely to experience grief or anxiety. However, the case has been made that this is comparable to divorce or the ending of other strong interpersonal relationships, and that cult defectors often experience psychological symptoms similar to divorce, namely separation anxiety.

Stronger and wiser
Children view their attachment figures as "stronger" and "wiser" than themselves. From a religious perspective, it is clear that believers view God as, in some cases, infinitely strong and infinitely wise (omnipotent and omniscient).

Individual differences
If the attachment system applies to religion, then individual differences in religious belief should be related to individual differences in internal working model (IWM) of other attachment figures. To explain how these differences may work, two distinct hypothesis exist: correspondence and compensation. Essentially, the correspondence hypothesis states that individual differences in attachment style and religious belief should correspond, while the compensation hypothesis states that religious attachments are meant to compensate for other inadequate attachment figures. These hypothesis may seem to have contradictory predictions, but they explain different paths that individuals may take, and therefore should not contradict each other.

Correspondence
The correspondence hypothesis states that individual differences in attachment style and religious belief should correspond. Causally, it's been suggested that childhood attachment patterns influence adult religiosity. Following common thoughts on attachment patterns, securely attached individuals, or those with "secure" IWMs of self and others, are expected to view religious figures as security supporting, although their religious activity should resemble their parents', or attachment figures', religious activity (social correspondence). Avoidant types are expected to view religious figures as remote or inaccessible and tend toward agnosticism and atheism. Finally, preoccupied (ambivalent/resistant) or anxious types may experience a clingy, all-consuming relationship with religious figures. Charting these interactions in a table gives the following:

Many findings support this hypothesis, including a positive correlation between God images and images of preferred parents and self-concepts, and that the loss of faith is associated with bad parental relationships. Furthermore, findings have linked estimated experiences with sensitive caregivers and secure attachment to a stable and loving God image, supporting IWM correspondence,, secure romantic attachments with a sense of secure attachment to God, and avoidant romantic attachments with agnosticism and atheism.

Socialized correspondence
The socialized-correspondence hypothesis views the causal direction of correspondence in the opposite direction: individual differences in attachment moderate the effects of adult religiosity. In this sense, a secure attachment encourages the socialization of children to parental religion while an insecure attachment does not. This process is called socialized correspondence.

Support for this interpretation comes from a variety of sources. Several attachment theorists have emphasized attachment figures' role in teaching and socialization, and many studies have shown that children typically agree with their parents on religious issues if their household is characterized by a stable, secure relationship (parents fight infrequently, typically agree on important issues, communicate openly with child). Additional empirical evidence comes from studies using the socialization-based religiosity scale (SBRS)

Two-level correspondence
The two-level correspondence hypothesis combines both correspondence hypotheses. In this hypothesis, “the first level denotes a primary mechanism of social learning of parental standards in the context of a secure relationship and the second level a secondary effect reflecting mental models correspondence between self/other and God.”

Compensation
The compensation hypothesis views religious attachment figures as substitutes for inadequate human attachment figures. Bowlby described this well in his statement:,"Whenever the “natural” object of attachment behavior is unavailable, the behavior can become directed towards some substitute object. Even though it is inanimate, such an object frequently appears capable of filling the role of an important, though subsidiary, attachment “figure.” Like the principal attachment figure, the inanimate substitute is sought especially when a child is tired, ill, or distressed." In this model, securely attached individuals are less likely to be religious, as they already have a sufficient attachment figure, while insecurely attached individuals are more likely to be religious, needing to compensate for their lack of a sufficient attachment figure. Furthermore, "the lack of adequate human attachments might be expected to motivate or enable belief in a God who is, in important ways, unlike one’s human attachment figures."

The compensation hypothesis has gained substantial support. Sudden religious conversions have been linked with insensitive caregivers, participants whose parents were independently rated as relatively less loving reported more sudden and intense increases in religiousness, and sudden converts score higher on the Emotionally Based Religiosity Scale, a scale designed to measure distress-related aspects of perceived religious relations, than both nonconverts and more gradual converts.