Mortality Salience, Self-Esteem, and Attachment to Adults and God

Current research on adult attachment suggests that there are two underlying dimensions of adult attachment—anxiety and avoidance (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Attachment anxiety refers to the degree to which adults are concerned with a desire for closeness and protection, and also their worries about the availability of and their worth to their partners. Avoidant attachment, on the other hand, refers to adults’ discomfort with closeness to others, and their preference for self-reliance and emotional distance. Individuals can be high or low on either dimension relative to other adults, and those low on both dimensions are considered “securely attached.” Kirkpatrick (2005) has proposed that for theists a representation of God can serve as an attachment figure as well, and that the same two dimensions of attachment—anxiety and avoidance—can apply to this relationship. For example, individuals might worry about their closeness to God, and whether or not God will find them worthy of love (high anxiety), or they might feel very comfortable entering into a close relationship with their deity, with no concern about their reliance upon that deity for support (low avoidance). The present research examines correspondence between the two types of attachment in the context of mortality salience effects. When individuals are primed for mortality salience—i.e., being made consciously aware of their mortality—they engage in processes such as self-esteem enhancement or validation of their worldview to cope with the anxiety that thoughts of their death provoke. Hart, Shaver, and Goldenberg (2005) found that threats to adult attachment resulted in defensive responses similar to those that occur with mortality salience, and Florian, Mikulincer, and Hirschberger (2002) found evidence that adult attachment acts as a buffer to the anxiety generated from mortality salience. In this study we examined whether attachment to God works in a similar fashion to adult attachment in attenuating the effects of mortality salience.