The International Journal for the Psychology o f Religion, 22:231-241, 2012 Copyright > Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1050-8619 print/1532-7582 online DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2012.679556

THEORY

Attachment Theory and the Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

Lee A. KirkpatrickDepartment o f Psychology College of William & Mary

More than 40 years after its inception, Bowlbys theory of infant-mother attachment remains widely accepted and highly influential across many areas and applications of psychology, including the psychology of religion. As compelling as the theory is for explaining phenomena within its natural domain, however, its explanatory scope is inherently limited: There are many aspects of religion that it cannot, and should not be expected to, explain. From the perspective of contemporary evolutionary psychologywith which Bowlbys original theory has much in commonthe attachment system is one among many functionally domain-specific cognitive adaptations that populate our species evolved psychological architecture. Evolutionary psychology offers a valuable perspective within which the attachment system can be seen properly as just one (important) piece of a much larger puzzleof psychology in general and religion in particularas well as a powerful and generative paradigm for identifying and fitting together the many other pieces that will be required if we are to progress toward a comprehensive psychology of religion.

It has been a little more than two decades since I first proposed in print that attachment theory had the potential to offer a powerful theoretical perspective for the psychology of religion (Kirkpatrick, 1992; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1990). The theory has since generated a considerable body of empirical research which, as illustrated by this special issue of The International Journal for the Psychology o f Religion, continues to grow in new and creative directions (for reviews, see Granqvist & Kirkpatrick, 2008, in press). I of course find this very gratifying, but it is John Bowlby, not I, who deserves the lions share of the credit: My own contribution has been mainly one of recognizing a good idea when I saw it. Attachment theory

Correspondence should be sent to Lee A. Kirkpatrick, Department of Psychology, College of William and Mary, P. O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795, USA. E-mail: lakirk@wm.edu

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itself was already more than two decades old at the time, and to this day it continues not only to be widely accepted but also to generate new research across many subdisciplines of psychology. The Handbook of Attachment (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008), now in its second edition, contains 40 chapters and weighs in at more than 1,000 pages. There are few theories in the history of psychology that can boast such staying power.

There are probably many reasons behind the success and longevity of attachment theory, but I suggest that one very important one is that Bowlby basically got it right. I believe that there really is an attachment systemin the same way that there really is, say, a visual system or an eating-regulation systemthat reliably develops in all humans (and many other species, though with differences in detail). I believe that this system can be understood as a suite of information-processing algorithms or psychological mechanisms that operate essentially as Bowlby described: for example, by attending to environmental information about the proximity of the primary caregiver (attachment figure [AF]) and cues of potential danger, combining this information with stored knowledge of previous experience with the AF, and motivating attachment behaviors when the AFs proximity falls below a desired set point. I believe that the recipe for building this cognitive/emotional system is coded in the human genome, because it evolved via natural selection as a solution to the adaptive problem of protecting helpless infants from predators and other dangers faced in ancestral environments by maintaining proximity between them and their primary caregivers. I believe, in turn, that parents (especially mothers) are motivated to respond in particular ways to attachment behaviors by an equally real parental caregiving systemanother evolved cognitive adaptation designed by natural selection in humans and many other species. I believe that the attachment system reliably produces certain patterns of individual differences, at least in part as a function of systematic differences in environmental inputs that cause the systems set point to be calibrated differently in different individuals, depending on such factors as the chronic presence of danger cues and the perceived reliability of the AF in responding to attachment behaviors. In the first part of this article I explain why I believe these things to be true, in a way that I do not believe the claims of most other psychological theories to be truein other words, why I think attachment theory was (and continues to be) such a good idea.

However, attachment theory is not, and cannot be, a comprehensive theory of the psychology of religion: It offers an explanation for, and a theoretical basis for developing new hypotheses about, only a limited range of religious phenomena. As powerful as it may be within this domain, attachment theory is unlikely to provide many useful insights about such important questions as the influence of religion on prejudice and warfare, the prevalence and nature of polytheistic beliefs systems (which likely dominated human thought until relatively recently), or the nature and origins of such widespread religious practices as sacrifices, elaborate rituals, and shamanism (to name just a few). The attachment system, I argue, is just one among many cognitive-emotional systems that populate our species evolved psychological architecture, so a comprehensive theory of psychologyand by extension, a comprehensive psychology of religionmust necessarily include many, many other cognitive adaptations beyond the attachment system. The crucial question, then, is: Where should we look for equally good ideas about these other systems and their role in shaping religious belief and behavior? In the second part of this article, I suggest that the answer to this question is contemporary evolutionary psychology, for the very same reasons that make attachment theory such a good idea. I then conclude by briefly illustrating some ways in which an evolutionary-psychological

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approach provides a powerful and novel perspective on some of the most long-standing problems and issues in the psychology of religion.

WHY ATTACHMENT THEORY IS A GOOD IDEA

The primary reason that I believe Bowlbys theory to be basically true, in a way that I do not believe most other psychological theories to be true, is this: In the first volume of his Attachment trilogy, Bowlby (1969) developed and explained in detail not only what he thought the attachment system might be and how he thought it might work, but why it is this way and not some other way. His justification for hypothesizing the existence of an attachment system and the principles by which it operates were not based, like so many other theories, merely on generalizations from extant findings or intuitions conjured in an armchair. Instead, he went outside the psychology and psychoanalysis of his day to draw upon such disparate fields as control systems theory, ethology, and evolutionary theory, the combination of which led him to an entirely new way of thinking about the nature and functional organization of human (and other species) psychology. In this sense Bowlbys genius was not so much in the product of his theorizing but the process by which he went about ita way of thinking that was otherwise to remain largely dormant within psychology until it reemerged nearly two decades later in the form of evolutionary psychology (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1987; Symons, 1987; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990, 1992).

The extent to which Bowlbys (1969) approach to human behavior anticipated contemporary evolutionary psychology (EP) is rather remarkable. Specifically, the manner in which he constructed his theory, piece by piece, illustrates several of the central defining features of contemporary EP, including the following:

1. Bowlby began by acknowledging the utility of thinking about human behavior in the context of animal behavior in general. He drew heavily upon ethology and comparative psychology to place human behavior in this larger context. For example, he saw imprint- ing behavior in precocial birds (Lorenz, 1957) as functionally analogous to human attach- ment, and saw the importance of Harlows (1958) classic research on infant monkeys behavior toward artificial mothers in the laboratory. He recognized that explanations of human behavior should be consistent with that of other animals behavior while recognizing important differences across species.

2. Bowlby appreciated that evolved behavior patterns in all species, as a product of natural selection, are organized around adaptive problems faced by that species throughout its evolutionary history. In the case of attachment, the adaptive problem to be solved is that of increasing the likelihood of survival of helpless infants from predators and other dangers, by maintaining proximity between the attached infant and its AF. He noted that the evolved imprinting system in goslings, per Lorenz, was designed by natural selection to solve an adaptive problem similar to that solved by the attachment system in primates but that the details of the evolved solution necessarily differ across species in light of other ecological and biological constraints (e.g., that goslings, unlike human infants, are locomotive from birth).

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3. Following from the previous point, Bowlby recognized that psychological adaptations such as the attachment system are (in modern parlance) functionally domain specific: that is, different behavior programs are required to solve different kinds of adaptive problems. Bowlby recognized the significance of Harlows (1935) work, for example, in demonstrating that the adaptive problems associated with obtaining food and avoiding predation are functionally distinct and thus require different cognitive programs to solve them. Moreover, he carefully distinguished the attachment system from other related (but functionally distinct) adaptations, such as the infants exploration system (which is enabled by secure attachment and the absence of danger cues) and the parental caregiving system (in the absence of which attachment behaviors would be useless).

4. Drawing upon ethology, Bowlby noted that although some evolved behavior systems are designed in a very simple way, such as fixed-action patterns in which a particular stimulus automatically activates a stereotyped response (e.g., a male Siamese fighting fish attacking a conspecific or its own mirror image), other behavior-regulation systems are more complex. Drawing upon control systems theory, the foundation of early work in artificial intelligence and computer programming, he envisioned the attachment system as a dynamic information-processing system with specific inputs, feedback loops, and outputs. Much as a thermostat monitors the temperature of the room, compares it with a preselected set point, and activates the heating or cooling system accordingly, the attachment systems monitors the proximity of the AF relative to a desired set point and activates attachment behaviors in response to a discrepancy. This manner of conceptual- izing motivation differed radically from the extant psychology and psychoanalysis of his day.

5. In thinking about the problem of how natural selection fashions psychological and phys- ical systems as solutions to adaptive problems, Bowlby acknowledged that adaptations were designed by natural selection as solutions to problems of the past: that is, adaptive problems as they existed during the time frame within which the adaptation evolved. In fact, Bowlbys most notable legacy in evolutionary biology is the term he introduced to reflect this concept: the environment o f evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). The fact that newly hatched goslings will (seemingly foolishly) follow around a human ethologist who had arranged to make himself the first large moving object they saw upon hatching illustrates how a system that reliably produced adaptive problems in the EEA can produce potentially maladaptive responses in novel environments (in this case, an environment that includes clever ethologists). This potential for mismatches between ancestral and modern environments to produce seemingly dysfunctional behavior represents one kind of unique insight on human behavior offered uniquely by an EP perspective and has widespread implications across many areas of psychological inquiry.

Of course, various elements of this approach have appeared in other theoretical traditions and subdisciplines over the history of psychology, both before and since Bowlby (1969). The field flirted briefly with instinct psychology in the early 1900s, which collapsed as quickly as it began due to an impoverished understanding of how instincts actually work (cf. the earlier fourth point). The tradition of behaviorism that was still influential when Bowlby wrote

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made liberal use of animal models, but for very different purposes (i.e., to study highly general learning processes that were intended to explain behavior as an alternative to instincts; cf. the earlier third point). Cognitive psychologists (and later, cognitive-science researchers) developed models of cognition as functionally specialized information-processing systems, but typically without reference to the evolutionary processes (and adaptive logic) responsible for designing them.1 Bowlbys genius was therefore not in producing any of these particular ideas per se, but in pulling them together from disparate sources into a coherent, logically consistent framework for reconceptualizing the nature and organization of human psychology.

Needless to say, the scientific world in which EP later emerged had changed in many important ways since the publication of Bowlby (1969) two decades prior. As noted previously, the idea that the mind/brain is highly modularthat is, comprises many, many functionally specialized information-processing systems (rather than a handful of highly domain-general ones)had become well established in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive sci- enee. To this well-established model, EP added a way of explaining why our evolved cognitive architecture is the way it is, and a powerful theoretical basis for generating new hypotheses about psychological mechanisms based on evolutionary theory. The field of sociobiology that emerged in the mid-1970s brought a return to evolution-based theorizing but, like the tradition of human behavioral ecology still popular today in anthropology and other fields, endeavored to explain observable behavior directly in terms of natural selection without reference to the psychological architecture that, at a proximal level, produces it.2 Evolutionary theory itself also changed in numerous important ways, with the advent of several powerful new theories with important implications for understanding (especially) social behavior (e.g., Trivers, 1971,1972, 1974). Today we have many more theoretical tools at our disposal for generating hypotheses about the design of human-evolved psychology than did Bowlby in 1969.

In the main, however, the basic template that Bowlby (1969) provided for developing a psychological theory remains almost entirely intact in the form of contemporary EP. Humans are characterized by a species-universal psychology that comprises highly numerous, functionally domain-specific mechanisms and systemsanalogous to the many specialized organs and systems in the human bodythat collectively constitute human nature. These cognitive adap- tations, like our bodily organs and other physiological systems, evolved via natural selection as solutions to adaptive problems faced recurrently by our distant ancestors. Consequently, we can use our understanding of the processes and criteria by which natural selection operates to develop (and empirically test) hypotheses about the nature and design of such mechanisms and

1 Another emerging discipline in the scientific study of religion, dubbed by Barrett (2007) and others as cognitive science of religion, similarly adopts this assumption of a species-universal psychological architecture populated by numerous, functionally specialized mechanisms and systems. Some of these approaches are grounded explicitly in EP, but many others are notalthough they may be evolutionary in the very different sense of cultural (vs. biological/ genetic) evolution. For a discussion of the ways in which EP and cognitive science of religion models do and do not overlap, see Kirkpatrick (in press).

2The principal argument leading to the emergence of EP as a discipline distinct from these other evolutionary approaches was that a cognitive or psychological level of analysis, inserted between the evolutionary and behavioral levels of analysis, is indispensible (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 1987; Symons, 1987). The genetic recipes resulting from natural selection produce cognitive adaptations, which in turn interact with environmental inputs to produce behavior. This previously missing link is essential for understanding the many ways in which behavior itself can often be maladaptive or adaptively neutral. (For a recent discussion of this levelsofanalysis issue, see Kirkpatrick, 2009.)

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systems. In effect, EP is a general approacha paradigm or organizational metatheorythat applies Bowlbys recipe for theory building to all topics and questions in the field of psychology (Buss, 1995). The attachment system, in this context, is just one among many, many cognitive adaptations that make up our species evolved psychological architecture.

BEYOND ATTACHMENT: TOWARD AN EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

Understanding why and how the attachment system (or any other cognitive adaptation) works is analogous to understanding the nature and operation of a particular piece of software on your computer, such as your favorite word-processing program. To understand more generally how your computer is able to accomplish the immense range of tasks of which it is capable, this one particular program would represent just one of many pieces of the puzzle; a compre- hensive understanding would necessarily include reference to web browsers, statistical analysis programs, spreadsheet programs, and so forth. An understanding of each of these, in turn, would require further analysis of the many smaller, specialized programs and subroutines of which each of these larger systems is constructed. Moreover, an understanding of the function for which each program was designed would be indispensible to your effort to understand how it works.

Further, note that a proper understanding of your computers behavior would be hampered by efforts to focus upon any one specific program to explain operations that actually reflect the operation of some other program. We have all had the (often annoying) experience of trying to learn how to use a new program and discovering that commands that worked in another more familiar program no longer have the same effects; different programs operate by different rules. It would be a mistake to try to explain as much of the computers behavior as possible in terms of the operation of, say, your word-processing program, rather than assuming from the beginning that different programs are likely to be responsible for word processing and statistical analysis. In the same way, it would be a mistake to try to explain too much about human psychology, including religious belief and behavior, in terms of the attachment system. We will make much more progress much more quickly if we acknowledge from the beginning that attachment is just one of many evolved psychological systems likely to influence religion, rather than overextending attachment theory beyond its natural explanatory domain.

The central task of a psychology of religion founded upon EP, then, is to identify the evolved psychological systems that give rise to and guide thinking and behavior that we choose to define as religious, and to explain why and how this occurs. The attachment system is one such systemone that, as illustrated by the present special issue, has provided the basis for many specific hypotheses that have received considerable empirical support. I by no means wish to discourage continued research on attachment and religion, but I do wish to suggest that the field would benefit greatly by also moving on to the study of the many other evolved psychological systems that contribute to religious belief and behavior as well.

Elsewhere (Kirkpatrick, 1999,2005) I have sketched outlines of what I consider a few highly promising directions in this regard, particularly within the context of functionally distinct kinds of interpersonal relationships. Bowlby was emphatic that attachment refers to a very specific kind of interpersonal relationship. Given our history as a highly social species, one major class

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of adaptive problems faced by ancestral humans involved those posed by relationships with other people. Consequently, a considerable proportion of our evolved psychology is designed for negotiating the many functionally distinct kinds of interpersonal relationships (including attachment) that humans must negotiate.

For example, humans (like many other species) are expected to possess cognitive adaptions for identifying genetic kin and behaving differently toward kin than non-kin. As Hamilton (1964) showed, natural selection designs adaptations according to the strict criterion of inclusive fitness: that is, the degree to which genes coding for the adaptation become more numerous in future generations (relative to genes for alternative designs). One way for genes to outcompete alternative genes is to build organisms that survive long enough to successfully reproducethe attachment system is an example of such an adaptationbut another way is to behave in ways that benefit other organisms who are likely to carry copies of those same genes. One obvious example of such kin-based altruism is, of course, the parental caregiving system, the existence of which was essential in order for the attachment system to have evolved. Other potential roles of kinship-psychology systems remain largely unexplored by psychologists of religion, other than the widely acknowledged observation that kinship language (e.g., God as Father, Jesus as the Son of God, fellow worshippers as brothers and sisters, etc.) is commonplace in religious texts and communities (e.g., Batson, 1983). However, the psychology of kinship represents an important point of contact with many anthropological views of religion, which have long emphasized the importance of kinship perceptions in world religions, such as beliefs about ancestors, and the important role such thinking plays in knitting cultural groups into cohesive, cooperative units (e.g., Crippen & Machalek, 1989).

Beyond close kin, however, we generally do not feel compelled to invest in others welfare, nor expect them to be invested in ours. Most other cooperative social relationships, beyond kinship, are governed by an evolved social exchange system based on the evolutionary principle of reciprocal altruism. Whereas Christian beliefs about God may largely reflect the operation of the attachment system (i.e., the perception that God is an attachment figure who cares about you and loves you, and thus provides a haven of safety and secure base), the gods of most religions around the world do not resemble attachment figures at all. Instead, they are far more often perceived as social-exchange partners who can do things that benefit people, but only in exchange for people doing something in return, such as offering particular forms of sacrifice (Burkert, 1996; Ridley, 1996). Social-exchange (as opposed to attachment-based) reasoning about God also occurs to various degrees in some Christian traditions, as in the belief that Gods love and support is contingent on humans performing good works or repenting for sins. (Note that there is no reason why beliefs and reasoning about a particular relationship, with a person or a god, must involve only one psychological system to the exclusion of others: For example, a parent who generally functions as an attachment figure might still offer an allowance to a child in exchange for performing chores around the house.)

Another domain of evolved psychology of clear relevance and importance for understanding religion is that of coalitional psychology, according to which humans readily distinguish ingroup from outgroup members and treat them differentially. On the positive side, coali- tional psychology provides a foundation for mutual cooperation and altruism within religious communities; on the negative side, it provides a foundation for intergroup conflict. An EP- based understanding of coalitional psychology will be crucial for addressing some of the most long-standing issues in the psychology of religion, such as the ways in which religion both

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makes and unmakes prejudice (Allport, 1954, p. 444). The empirical finding that religious fundamentalism correlates more positively with outgroup prejudice than do other dimensions of religiosity, for example, is consistent with the idea that fundamentalist ideology largely reflects the inclusion of a strong coalitional-psychology element in religion (Laythe, Finkel, Bringle, & Kirkpatrick, 2002). Again, it is doubtful that the attachment system plays an important role in such coalitional thinking.

Of obvious relevance to the psychology of religion is the question of whether, among the many domain-specific cognitive adaptations that make up our evolved psychological ar- chitecture, there exist one or more mechanisms or systems designed by natural selection specifically for religion. Elsewhere I have delineated numerous reasons to be skeptical about this possibility: It is much more difficult than one might expect to make a persuasive case that religiosity (or any particular aspect of it) would have reliably solved adaptive problemsin the crucial sense of enhancing reproductive success or inclusive fitnessin ancestral environments, and would have done so more effectively than much simpler designs that natural selection could have found much more readily (Kirkpatrick, 2006, 2008). The application of attachment theory to the psychology of religion illustrates the alternative to this religionasadaptation hypothesis by conceptualizing religion as an evolutionary by-product of a system that evolved for other purposes (in this case, maintaining proximity between young children and their primary caregivers). This is not to say that religion cannot be beneficial or functional in various ways for individuals or groups, of course, but it does imply that we should not necessarily expect it to always be so (which, of course, it isnt).

OTHER IMPLICATIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION

Beyond the various arguments just developed, adopting an evolutionary-psychological perspec- tive on the psychology of religion offers a variety of other advantages over other kinds of psychological theories. In this section I briefly outline a few ways in which EP provides useful ways of addressing or reframing some of the fields most central and long-standing problems. (For a more thorough discussion, see Kirkpatrick, in press.)

First, as noted earlier, one of the strengths of attachment theory is its ability to explain, within a single theoretical framework, both the normative aspects of attachment (and religion) and individual differences in attachment (and religion). Conceptualizing religion as the by- product(s) of many different psychological systems adds a layer to this analysis: Whereas commonalities in religious belief and behavior across individuals and cultures can be understood in terms of the species-universal psychology from which it emerges as a by-product, differences between individuals and cultures can be traced to two kinds of sources. First, as illustrated by attachment theory, any particular evolved system is likely to produce certain predictable patterns of individual differences as a consequence of an individuals experience in the relevant domain. Much as repeated experience with an unreliable or unavailable attachment figure can lead over time to recalibration of attachment-system parameters and thus stable patterns of individual differences in behavior (i.e., secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent attachment styles), individual differences in experience in domains of coalitional conflict, social exchange reasoning, and so forth, are likely to lead to predictable changes in parameters of these

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respective systems and corresponding patterns of individual differences. That is, to the extent that a particular individuals (or cultures) religious thinking is a by-product of any particular psychological system, individual differences emerging from that underlying system are likely to be reflected along certain dimensions of religiosity. Second, individual and cultural differences may alternatively reflect the relative degree to which various psychological systems influence an individuals or cultures religious beliefs. That is, people or cultures whose religious thinking is guided primarily by coalitional psychologyperhaps, as suggested earlier, in fundamentalist religionswill likely differ systematically from people whose religious thinking is guided primarily by social exchange or attachment.

Second, similarly, conceptualizing psychology in terms of numerous, functionally specialized evolved mechanisms offers a natural basis for delineating types or varieties of religion and spirituality, in a way that corresponds to differences that are functionally important rather than merely descriptive. For example, one might develop a typology of varieties of prayer in terms of the underlying psychological systems that motivate them: Attachment-based prayer might reflect efforts to feel close to God or to solicit support and protection; prayer based on social- exchange reasoning might involve attempts to determine what God wants or expects in exchange for requested favors; prayers based on a cognitive system for negotiating dominance hierarchies might mainly focus on acknowledging Gods greatness and omnipotence. Such a functional approach to analyzing types would not only provide a nonarbitrary basis for classification, but also provide a clear theoretical basis for generating specific hypotheses about, for example, the particular environmental conditions (and patterns of individual differences, as noted in the immediately preceding paragraph), likely to motivate or give rise to them.

Third, an evolutionary-psychological approach provides a useful way of operationalizing the long-standing (but often ambiguously framed) question regarding whether religion is sui generis: that is, whether or not it in principle it can be fully explained in terms of other mundane processes or phenomena (see Pargament, Magyar-Russell, & Murray-Swank, 2005, for a discussion). In evolutionary terms, this question can be reframed precisely in terms of whether religion (or some aspect of it) is the product of an adaptation specifically designed for this purpose, or whether it is a by-product of one or more systems that evolved for other purposes. According to the latter view, for which I have argued, religion should (at least in principle) be understandable without reference to any unique, religion-specific cognitive adaptations. If one could successfully make the case for the evolution of one or more religion- specific cognitive adaptations, however, the answer would be different.

Fourth, and relatedly, the evolutionary-psychological approach that I have outlined here offers insights into the timeless problem of defining terms such as religion and spirituality in the first place. If one wishes to argue for the existence of religion-specific cognitive adaptations, it is incumbent upon him or her to be able to specify precisely the particular kinds of thoughts, values, experiences, or behaviors that such a system is designed to produce: Those particular outcomes would serve as a functional, theoretically based definition of religion. On the other hand, if religion is viewed as a by-product of numerous evolved systems designed by natural selection for other purposesand thus is not sui generis in this sensethen there is probably little point in even attempting to impose a precise definition upon it at all, and we should not be surprised that for any example of a belief or behavior that we would be inclined to refer to as religious, it is easy to generate examples of phenomena that seem highly similar to it in one or more ways but that most of us would agree are not religious. Indeed, the fact that highly

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motivated scholars have been unable for centuries to identify a single common thread that unambiguously distinguishes religion from nonreligion constitutes one important argument in favor of a multiple-by-product hypothesis, and against an adaptationist hypothesis, of religion.

CONCLUSIONS

It is unfortunate that after the publication of Bowlby (1969), nearly two decades passed until a different group of researchers effectively reinvented Bowlbys wheel, writ large in the form of modern evolutionary psychology. These researchers shared with Bowlby the assumptions that human psychology is inherently organized, like the rest of the body, in terms of functionally specialized mechanisms and systems, and that to understand how a system (in this case, a psychological system) works, it is invaluable to begin with an understanding (or at least a hypothesis) regarding what that system is designed to do, and why. Once this general perspective is adopted, it becomes abundantly clear that attachment theory is but one of countless evolutionary theories upon which the psychology of religion might be built.

As I argued in the first part of this article, I am convinced that one reason for the success and longevity of attachment theory is that Bowlby got it essentially right. We will not know for another 20 years whether the application of his theory to the psychology of religion proves to have that same level of staying power. I am sufficiently optimistic, however, that I suggest we now start the clock for a broader evolutionary psychology of religion, within which attachment theory will continue to have an important role alongside many other equally good ideas that, for now, await further development.

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