Religious Leaders as Promoters of Peace?

• In Event: Group-Based Reasoning, Prejudice, and Political Discrimination

Abstract

Increasing religious violence makes it imperative to develop strategies to foster interreligious peace. Theories of social influence suggest religious leaders to be promising promoters of peace as they are often regarded by citizens as accessible, trustworthy, credible and effective in solving problems and enforcing sanctions. At the same time, the growing number of people being connected through social media make videos a promising tool for spreading peace messages.

In our paper, we test if religious leaders can improve interreligious cooperation and the willingness for interreligious contact through video messages. We conducted lab-in-the field experiments with 1,900 Christians and Muslims in 50 neighborhoods of Lomé, Togo and Freetown, Sierra Leone to test (1) if video peace messages improve interreligious relations, (2) if religious leaders are more successful in fostering interreligious peace than non-leaders, and (3) if it matters whether religious leaders and receivers of the message have the same religious identity. In our pre-registered experimental design, respondents are assigned to one of four treatments: ingroup leader video peace message, outgroup leader video peace message, non-leader video peace message, or no video. Interreligious cooperation was measured via a public goods game in which participants randomly either played with an ingroup or outgroup player.

Examining the combined sample of Christians and Muslims, our preliminary results suggest that, in line with hypothesis 1, having been exposed to a video peace message significantly increases outgroup cooperation compared to the no-video control group. However, we do not find evidence for hypothesis 2 – videos with religious leaders are not more successful in fostering interreligious cooperation as compared to videos by non-leaders. In fact, while all kinds of videos (by both, religious leaders and non-leaders) increase interreligious cooperation, videos by non-leaders seem to enhance interreligious cooperation by about 7.5 percentage points, while videos by religious leaders increase interreligious cooperation by only 4 percentage points compared to the no video condition. Finally, we do not find support for hypothesis 3 – ingroup leaders are not any more successful in fostering interreligious cooperation as compared to outgroup leaders.

Our results have important implications: First, spreading peace messages by social media can be a successful strategy for improving intergroup relations. Second, it may not be necessary to work with leaders. Instead, interventions with peers may lead to the same – or even better – results. Third, promoting ideas that are tolerant seems crucial to improve intergroup relations.

Authors

• Lisa Hoffmann, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA)

• Julia Köbrich, German Institute for Global and Area Studies

• Matthias Basedau, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies