Granqvist and Hagekull (2001) were able to show that there was a great consensus on the claims they presented. In other words, a common worldview. Did the supporters share something more besides certain interests and a collection of ideas about how life worked?

In the same study (Granqvist &amp. Hagekull, 2001), the above questionnaire was combined with a survey based on attachment theory. The researchers wanted to see if people who were positive about the New Age also excelled in so-called attachment patterns. The hypothesis was that the test subjects would exhibit a higher degree of so-called "uncertain attachment", indicating that the individual experienced the early, close relationships in life as unsafe. The results of this part of the study also gave it a positive result. People who scored high on the NAOS scale stood out for such an "unsafe" attachment pattern. When comparing (Granqvist, Ivarsson, Broberg &amp. Hagekull, 2007) with people who had a traditional religious belief, they have rather shown a "safe" connection. At the group level, there seems to be something that unites new people interested even on a deeper level. In the latter survey, those with high scores on NAOS were judged to have experienced more of things like rejection and role reversals while growing up than those who scored low.

The group of new entrants has also been examined with various cognitive and personality tests. For example, the researchers have investigated such things as tendency to magical thinking, thin-walledness and cognitive loseness (Farias, Claridge &lalljee, 2005). Here, too, people with a recent interest have shown a common and divergent profile compared to the control groups (often traditionally religious and non-religious). All of these variables are in one way or another about an elevated sensitivity or associative/perceptual mobility. In a survey by Farias and Lalljee (2006, referenced in Farias &granqvist, 2007), the test participants were asked to comment on some stories with everyday events based on the question: "How would you interpret this situation?" For example, the stories could describe a meeting with a person who felt very familiar. Instead of suggesting that it was someone the test subject might have encountered in the store some day, or even that "God wanted us to meet," people with a new orientation often explained situations like this using paranormal or supernatural arguments: "Our souls have probably met before," or "We have the same energies that make us feel drawn to each other.". In an experiment by Farias et al. (2005) the test subjects were allowed to sit in front of a computer screen in a dimly lit room. On the screen, 100 dots were projected, which shifted at high speed at random for ten minutes. The instruction was that motifs would be interspersed with random images and that the test subjects would tell when something came to be recognized. Newly oriented saw significantly more motifs (e.g. animal motifs, dancing people and angels) than the other groups. People with a traditional religious orientation saw no more than average.

People with a new interest are thus not only united by certain thoughts or relationship patterns, but they also seem to share a cognitive orientation that makes them seek meaningful connections between seemingly distant and unrelated things and events Farias and Granqvist (2007) believes that this psychological tendency is also behind these individuals changing groups and activities often without forging close ties, unlike people with a traditional religious belief who more often settle in a congregation. In another study (Farias &amp. Lalljee, 2005), it was concluded that individuals with a new-age orientation are characterized by what the researchers chose to call "holistic individualism". This represents a combination of two tendencies that otherwise do not usually occur in the same person, namely an individualistic orientation, which is about self-realization and striving towards one's own goals, rather than as part of a group, while expressing universalist ideals of solidarity, equality, not wanting to compete, but even wanting to go up into a greater unity. In addition, the new test subjects had a peculiar way of describing themselves. When asked "Who am I?" they gave abstract answers. Individuals with a collectivist orientation usually, asked to describe themselves, do this with judgments that in a concrete way relate to their social reality (for example, "I am a daughter" or "I am a baker"), while those with a more individualistic orientation use comparatively more abstract judgments about themselves (for example, "I am cheerful"). The newly interested described themselves with expressions such as "I am a bridge", "I am united" or "I am an illusion".

The new spirituality differs from traditional religion also in that it often lacks a personal God with whom the individual can have a relationship, as well as seek comfort and understanding in when needed (Granqvist, 2014). People with a secure connection take over their parents' religion to a greater extent and they then pass on their good experiences in the image of God. Although these individuals choose a different religion than their parents, they tend to find a loving God there. People who embrace a new worldview, with an impersonal or absent deity, are also assumed to be affected by their earliest experiences. Granqvist (2014) emphasizes how God is used as a symbolic attachment object by those with a secure connection in a way that is deeper than just being a conscious notion. In subliminal experiments, it has been possible to demonstrate that these individuals have access to a "safe harbor" within them that they automatically seek support from in a stressful situation.

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