Attachment and Spiritual Maturity 66
attended church, and how frequently religious issues were discussed in the family may
have influenced students' anxiety from paternal strictness about performing activities.
This may lead to an obligatory response to God in relationship to doing service for others.
Another consideration for this effect may be ethnicity. Thirty-eight percent of
the sample was Asian. A One-Way Analysis ofVariance showed a significant statistical
difference between Asian and Caucasian existed on the paternal overprotection variable.
Asians may experience more overprotection by their fathers resulting in an overprotective
image ofGod. This was suggested in the literature by Gnaulati (1996). His study using
the PBI suggested that high paternal overprotection and high care (affectionate constraint)
was also found to negatively impact the over-all level of separation-individuation across
ethnic groups (Gnaulati, 1996). Ethnic groups with overprotective fathers may have
difficulty separating from their fathers. This results in experiencing God as controlling
and feeling the need to perform service to others.
Further research needs to bring understanding and clarity to divergent motivations
for Horizontal Faith Maturity. But this study did again suggest that paternal attachment
is an important consideration in attachment related issues.
Implications of the Study
A number of implications are suggested based on the results and discussion of
findings in this study. These implications will be discussed as they relate to the research
findings, to the theory, and to application of the theory.
Implications of the Relationship of Secure Child Attachment to Secure Adult Attachment
The weak relationship between secure child attachment and secure adult
attachment reported in this study has implications for attachment theory. The first
implication relates to maintaining openness to the influential experiences of adult
attachment on the working models of attachment established in infancy. The argument
that attachment theory predicts 100% stability from infancy to adulthood is one of the
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