We need help with the science of attachment

We need your help with a brand-new psychological measure of attachment.

The Center for Embodied Faith has been working with Jessica Sanderson (PhD, Family Development, LMFT) to develop a new measure of attachment and spirituality.

And we need your help to validate it!

To move the science of attachment forward, we need about 400 people (or more) to take this new psychological assessment alongside older surveys & assessments.

What do we need from you?

• ​Just take this 15-minute survey.

Why are we doing this?

Short story: The goal is to make a new, more up-to-date psychological tool of spirituality and attachment for the public to use, and to write up a couple research articles about the findings.

The long story is below the break for those who want to read it.

So please, can you give us ​15 minutes of your time to help move this research forward? We would be so grateful.

Blessings,
Geoff Holsclaw (PhD)
Co-Founder & Executive Director: The Center for Embodied Faith

After all the data is in and we write up the research findings, we will spell these out a bit clearer. But here are some of the reasons for developing a new attachment and spirituality instrument (these are from me, Geoff Holsclaw, and do not necessarily represent the views of Jessica Sanderson).

1. Some of the older attached to God measures were based in the “romantic attachment” research stream of attachment, which is not opposed to the developmental stream of attachment research, but it can be pretty different, often just emphasizing the sense of “self” and “other” with reference to one’s agency in the world.

2. The romantic attachment stream of attachment pathologized the two axes of attachment as either “avoidant” or “anxious”. The founders of attachment theory chose the non-pathologizing word “attachment” to move away from the pathologizing perspective of psychoanalysis and psychological research. The net effect of this pathologizing perspective for psychological measures of attachment and spiritual attachment is that someone who is “secure” is known as “low in avoidant” and “low in anxiety” without any positive content. Our ​Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection​ followed researchers in listing these dimensions as “intimacy” and “independence”, such that secure attachment was having high capacity for and integration of both intimacy and independence.

3. In addition to this, others have criticized the older measures for not measuring for a positive “felt sense of security”, which we have attempted to add by leaning on the developmental side of attachment research.

Some of the articles used to develop the above thoughts:

• The massive ​Cornerstones of Attachment Research​ (Oxford University Press) is free online, and looks closely at the romantic attachment stream.

• Cameron, J. J., Finnegan, H., & Morry, M. M. (2012). Orthogonal dreams in an oblique world: A meta-analysis of the association between attachment anxiety and avoidance. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(5), 472–476. ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2012.05.001​

• Francesca Lionetti, Stefanos Mastrotheodoros & Benedetta Emanuela Palladino (2018) Experiences in Close Relationships Revised Child version (ECR-RC): Psychometric evidence in support of a Security factor, European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15:4, 452-463, DOI:​10.1080/17405629.2017.1297228​

• Laura Machan, Christopher Bale, Daniel Boduszek, A bifactorial approach to the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised scale, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 233, 2025, ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2024.112911.