Does Ramadan serve as a naturalistic intervention to promote Muslim American adolescents’ daily virtues? Evidence from a three wave experience sampling study

ABSTRACTReligion/spirituality has been linked to virtue development across individuals, but most of this evidence is derived from decontextualized one-time survey studies. We employed a three-wave experience sampling study to examine whether Ramadan heightens Muslim American adolescents' connectedness to Allah, inhibitory self-control, initiatory self-control, patience, and compassion within individuals. Adolescents (N = 202) were prompted to complete three daily surveys for a week before, during, and after Ramadan each. Results indicated that adolescents grew more connected to Allah and exhibited greater inhibitory self-control, initiatory self-control, and patience in their daily lives from pre-Ramadan to Ramadan, with continued elevated effects for initiatory self-control and patience – but not for inhibitory self-control – after Ramadan. In contrast, adolescents reported high levels of daily compassion before and during Ramadan, but lower levels after Ramadan. Our findings emphasized the importance of disentangling within- and between-person effects and have implications for virtue theories and the design of intervention programs.KEYWORDS: Religiosity/spiritualityself-controlpatiencecompassionexperience sampling Data StatementThe data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, Merve Balkaya-Ince, upon reasonable request.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data Availability StatementThe data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable requests.Open scholarship This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Materials and Preregistered. The materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/yc4eg/?view_only=866f73554bc64504be85ce9fee9f671b.Supplementary materialSupplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2169631Notes1. However, compared to other interventions that build self-control, dietary practices are less consistently effective than other types of regulatory practices (i.e., use of non-dominant hand, handgrip practice, posture correction, and inhibition on a screen; Friese et al., Citation2017). This may be due to the fact regulation of eating is a more emotionally charged activity in a society that stigmatizes larger body sizes and obesity. Participants may imbue the dietary restrictions with more specific meaning related to body image than other practices. Interestingly, fasting in religious contexts also ascribes meaning to fasting, but the meaning is related to transcendent connection rather than physical health or beauty.Additional informationFundingThis publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.