The Investigation of Relationship between Religious Attitudes and Attachment Styles among Iranian Students

Sedigheh Sakaki, Toozandehjani Hassan

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran.

DOI: 10.4236/ojpsych.2017.72011                

Abstract

During recent years, A new tendency has appeared among psychologists to pay more attention to the influence of family, cultural and social factors on the human personality and his internal needs. This tendency is in favor of more attention to religion for treatment of mental health, thought and mental disorders. The type of researches: this research is a correlation and post-event (causative) which has done with the purpose of studying the relationship between religious attitudes with attachment styles for the students. So a sample of 60 students of humanitarian sciences majors at the Islamic Azad University of Neyshabour randomly selected classical (according to the results of attachment style inventory, completed by 150 students). The religious attitudes of subjects were tested by Alport religious orientation inventory and their attachment style by Shiver and Hezen’s adult attachment test and were tested according to the results of descriptive and inferential statistics methods. The results of research indicated that for the subjects which have safe attachment style, their religious attitudes are internal. For the subjects which have unsafe attachment style (evidential, ambivalent), their religious attitudes are external. And also the subjects with ambivalent unsafe attachment style have internal religious attitudes in comparison with evidential unsafe attached persons. So, it can be said person’s attachment style is affected by their religious attitudes. As related to the attained results and comparing them with the results of past researches, it can be said that people with internal religious orientation and safe attached persons have confidence in others (especially to themselves) because of some personal characteristics. So, there is no reason for fear or for connivance of what they want and naturally will have an attitude which is needless to show pretension and hypocrisy. As a result, their religious attitude score in internal scale is more than external scale.

Keywords

Religious Attitudes, Attachment Styles, Iranian Students, General Psychology

1. Introduction

Human beings, from the beginning to the end of any age and any situation, need affection and love of parents, other family members and his all fellow-creatures. Human has to enjoy the affective, social, economic sense and other psychical and mental aspects, and needs to belong to a group of houses, family and etc. [1] .

[2] has emphasized the causative relationship between individual experiences with parents and individual capacity and ability in the establishment of emotional connections in the future. He believed that attachment theory is not only infant change theory, but also lifetime change theory.

[3] believed although attachment behavior can observe highly in infant period, it can observe in lifetime rotation and especially the urgencies too.

[4] has reported that there is a person who concerns you and thinks about you.

In any age and any situation there is an important role and he is as a safe base. In attachment formation process [5] brings near the child to mother, the system of feelings and attachment behaviors, and keeps him/her safe from danger.

[6] [7] understood the people who have internal religion of attitude experienced less anxiety, tension and mental pressure compared with the persons who have external religion of attitude.

Numerous researches [8] have indicated the people who have avoidant and ambivalent unsafe attachment style, mostly have no trust to others and themselves. This characteristic causes that they sometime concern and behave anxiously and have less truthful behavior. These results have been reported in the researches of [9] [10] .

The results of [11] research indicate that avoidant unsafe persons have external religious attitude in comparison with the ambivalent unsafe persons. The lack of self-confidence in the analysis of mental-interior basses, usually destroys the favor confronting power of situation and indicates a kind of psychological extreme poverty for these persons. These results are observed in the researches of [12] [13] .

Numerous researches [14] [15] indicate that the persons who have unsafe interest style, usually have no personality development because of fear from punishment and others reproach and have tendency to receive social privilege/points, so they have tool tendency to religion.

The results of [16] [17] indicate that the persons who have ambivalent unsafe attachment style for receiving peace, draw others attention, because of weakness in suitable connecting with other persons and having concern about not being accepted by them, and these kind of persons mostly don’t trust others.

The results of [18] researches indicate that the persons who have ambivalent unsafe attachment style have problems in marriage adjustment and internal attitude.

It’s believed that human beings in the lifetime receive peace and safety by religion. Believe in God is the greatest shelter that relaxes to the human beings psyche.

[19] also says that the religious and nonreligious people experience the same mental pressure rate, but the religious people can better check with lifetime negative events and mental stressful factory. The religious people use from religion for checking with mental pressure well. Do their reaction to mental pressure influence on factors like, safe attachment in effect of social support and person hard working?

And now, we have this question, if the persons have deep attachment to unlimited power of God that always is in use and can trust it, will it affect on the effective and vocational attachment, and will the kind of attachment of every person affect on religious attitude or not?

Because every culture brings the methods for the persons and the persons will have influence of each others, it was necessary to study the attachment style and their religious attitude between some of them to indicate the influence of attachment style on their religious attitudes. In this investigation 3 theories were studied: 1) the subjects having safe attachment style, than the subjects having unsafe attachment style (avoidant and ambivalent) have an internal religious attitude. 2) The subjects having unsafe attachment style (avoidant and ambivalent) than the subjects having safe attachment style have an external religious attitude. 3) The subjects having ambivalent unsafe attachment style than the subjects having avoidant unsafe style have an internal attitude.

2. Methodology

This research is a correlation and causative (post-event) which has done with the purpose of studying attachment styles relationship with religious attitudes of students. At first, the inventory of adult Shiver and Hezen attachment style with Alport religious attitude inventory among the subjects (200 people who had been randomly classical and cluster selected) distributed and completed. Then from statistical society of this research included all of female students of humanitarian sciences major of Neyshabour Azad University, a sample of 60 people (based on the toppest Alport religious of attitude and attachment style inventory marks) had been selected. From this number, 30 people had safe attachment and 30 people had unsafe attachment (15 people had avoidantial unsafe attachment style, 15 people had ambivalent unsafe attachment style). After that the results were analyzed via descriptive and explanatory statistical methods.

In this research, 2 inventories are used: 1) Attachment style inventory: This exam is a one-factor self-basement instrument that includes 3 descriptive statement from the person feeling about easiness or friendship in the relations). With applying a 9 degrees grading scale (from complete agreement to complete disagreement), it’s wanted from participants to score each statement according to the degree that is based on their feelings and experiences in the relationships. The analyses that is done on classification tool, lead to decision making in person attachment style, while the analyses that is done on scoring measures lead to decision making about the proportion of dimension degrees (that is security, avoidance, ambivalent) that exist in all persons much or less.

2) Alport religious classification inventory Alport made a 20 degree scale which 11 options of item related to external attitude and 9 options of it are related to internal attitude. Figen made a 21 options version from this scale that all of Alport options were selected in. One another option was added to it. According to Alport researches the correlation between internal religious attitudes with external religious of attitude options was −0.21. In some of other studies such as the studies that were done by Figen, the correlation between internal and external religious attitudes was −0.20 that is so close to the correlation calculated by Alport. The validity of the scale has been properly reported by [20] . In a research that was calculated via Kranbakh Alpha by Tabatabaee, Alahyari and Mokhtari, the Alpha was reported equivalent to 0.712.

3. Results

For studying the theories of investigation, the data were analyzed by statistical methods such as correlation coefficient and then we will study the meaningfulness of this coefficient by t-test. At first is reported the summary results of the subjects demographic characteristics and then indicates the analytical results (Tables 1-7).

According to t-calculated (5.33) is more than t-standard (2.048), so the assumption of being zero is rejected. On the other hand, the correlation coefficient has meaningful between safe attachment style and internal religious attitude. So,

Table 1. Mean and standard deviation of the subjects demographic particulars.

Table 2. Agreement table of subject numbers in attachment group in terms of educations.

Table 3. Mean and standard deviation of numbers for 3 groups of attachment style and internal and external religious attitude.

Table 4. Correlation coefficient number for safe interest style and internal and external religious attitude.

Table 5. Correlation coefficient between unsafe attachment style number and internal and external religious attitudes.

Table 6. T-test results about unsafe attachment style (avoidant) and external and internal religious attitude.

Table 7. T-test results about ambivalent unsafe attachment style and external religious attitude.

the claim of researcher is confirmed about meaningful relations between safe attachment style and internal religious attitude.

According to t-calculated (5.8) is more than t-standard (2.048), so the assumption of being zero is rejecter. On the other hand, the claim of researcher is confirmed about meaningful relation between unsafe attachment style and external religious attitude. So, there is a meaningful correlation between unsafe attachment style and external religious attitude.

According to t-calculated (t = 2.31) is more than t-standard (t = 2.160), so the assumption if being zero is rejected. On the other hand, there is a meaningful correlation between unsafe attachment style and external religious attitude. So the claim of researcher is confirmed about external religious attitude for the group having avoidant unsafe attachment style.

According to, t-calculated (2.70) is more that t-standard (2.160). So the assumption of being zero is rejected and the claim of researcher is confirmed about internal religious attitude in the persons having ambivalent attachment style.

4. Discussion

As related to the attained results and compared them with the results of researches [20] [21] , it can be said that the persons with internal religious orientation experience less mental pressure, and anxiety compared with the persons having external religious orientation.

These results with the results of present research are agreement. [22] has indicated that there is a negative correlation between the ambivalence scale numbers and the marriage adjustment, so unsafe persons have problems in the marriage adjustment and in the internal attitude too.

Because of moral particulars, safe attached persons can trust than all the persons, especially than themselves, and have no fear about desired things consequently.

And naturally they have attitude, and no need to affectation. And for hypocrisy, that’s why their religious attitude number in internal scale is more than external scale that is in agreement with the results of present research [12] [13] [19] [20] [23] .

These results are in agreement with the results of present research too.

The results of these research indicated that the subjects having safe attachment style have internal religious attitude, in spite that persons having external religious attitude are more unsafe attached persons and the main reason of this result is self-confidence and others confidence. Those are two main characteristics of safe persons. These results are in agreement with the results of [1] [3] [7] .

Avoidant unsafe persons have more external attitude, because the lack of self- confidence and others confidence are two main particulars of unsafe persons [13] . The lack of self-confidence in the analysis of mental-interior basis, usually destroys the desired confronting power of situation and indicates a kind of psychological extreme poverty for unsafe persons. These results are in agreement with the result of [14] [15] .

The unsafe persons usually have no personality development because of fear from punishment and others reproach and have tendency to receive social privilege/points, so they have tool tendency to religion, and they have defect in their faith [2] [3] [4] .

In spite of the persons having ambivalent unsafe attachment style, the persons having avoidant unsafe attachment style, have no self-others and they try to earn peace by others attracting attention, because of their moral character they cannot connect with others and they are always concerned to be alone.

These results are also in agreement with the results of [5] [6] [8] [11] .

NOTES

^*Sedigheh Sakaki: M.A. in General Psychology; Toozandehjani Hassan: Assistant Professor, PhD. of Psychology.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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