Childhood Unpredictability is Associated With Religious Coping Through Attachment to God and Divine Forgiveness

Abstract

Because a majority of the world’s population is religious and believes in some higher power, it is important to understand what may facilitate or hinder religious psychological processes that give rise to well-being. The current work therefore threads together behavioral ecological, attachment, and forgiveness theoretical perspectives to assess candidate correlates of divine forgiveness and religious coping. Study 1 (N = 441) showed, via a single path model, that childhood unpredictability was positively associated with avoidant attachment to God, which was in turn negatively associated with divine forgiveness, such that avoidant attachment to God fully mediated the association between childhood unpredictability and divine forgiveness. Study 2 (N = 417) extended the investigation to religious coping, again analyzing data via a single path model. Childhood unpredictability was associated with positive (but not negative) coping through a mediation sequence of insecure attachment (avoidant and anxious) and, in turn, divine forgiveness. For avoidance, unpredictability was positively associated with avoidant attachment, which was negatively associated with divine forgiveness, which was positively associated with positive religious coping. For anxious attachment, unpredictability was positively associated with anxious attachment, which was positively associated with divine forgiveness, which was positively associated with positive religious coping. Notably, avoidant attachment was also curvilinearly associated with anxious attachment and coping, such that people high and low (vs. average) in avoidance are high in anxious attachment as well as positive and negative religious coping. Thus, the work provides insights important to both the study of early childhood environments and the study of religious psychological processes.