Intervention(s)
In the presence of uncertainty, beliefs drive decision-making. For example, beliefs about the importance of community, women’s appropriate role in society, and prevailing social norms all factor into decisions such as whether to act prosocially towards neighbors or support women’s labor market participation. Previous work has demonstrated how changing beliefs can engender positive social change (Bursztyn et al., 2020). However, belief formation, and the role of past experiences, religion, media, schooling, and local leaders therein remains understudied.
In this project, I focus on religious leaders and study the importance of one source of information in Muslim society for belief formation: sermons. Delivered before the Friday congregational prayer by an imam, the sermon, or khutbah, is often considered one of the most important sources of spiritual, social, and moral guidance for Muslims. While such messaging may partially help explain the strong correlation between moralistic religion and prosociality observed globally (Caicedo et al., 2023), concern has been raised about the potential for sermons to preserve conservative social norms but evidence is lacking. Since the information in sermons is public, the audience often exclusively male, and the source a local religious leader, a causal evaluation of Friday sermons offers a unique opportunity to study belief formation in the presence of others, intra-household belief transmission, the sources of religious leaders' authority, and the potential for sermons to serve as policy tools for information transmission.
To this end, I work with the Punjab Auqaf Department, which is responsible for running state mosques, to randomize sermon content and evaluate effects on individuals' beliefs and behavior. I then study impacts on prosociality towards neighbors and attitudes about women's economic and social participation to further our understanding of the role of religion, religious leaders, and religious messaging in shaping social beliefs and behavior.