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Main Authors: Betti, Lorenzo, Bajardi, Paolo, Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12872
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author Betti, Lorenzo
Bajardi, Paolo
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
author_facet Betti, Lorenzo
Bajardi, Paolo
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
contents The interaction between social norms and gender roles prescribes gender-specific behaviors that influence moral judgments. Here, we study how moral judgments are biased by the gender of the protagonist of a story. Using data from r/AITA, a Reddit community with 17 million members who share first-hand experiences seeking community judgment on their behavior, we employ machine learning techniques to match stories describing similar situations that differ only by the protagonist's gender. We find no direct causal effect of the protagonist's gender on the received moral judgments, except for stories about ``friendship and relationships'', where male protagonists receive more negative judgments. Our findings complement existing correlational studies and suggest that gender roles may exert greater influence in specific social contexts. These results have implications for understanding sociological constructs and highlight potential biases in data used to train large language models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_12872
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Moral Judgments in Online Discourse are not Biased by Gender
Betti, Lorenzo
Bajardi, Paolo
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
Computers and Society
The interaction between social norms and gender roles prescribes gender-specific behaviors that influence moral judgments. Here, we study how moral judgments are biased by the gender of the protagonist of a story. Using data from r/AITA, a Reddit community with 17 million members who share first-hand experiences seeking community judgment on their behavior, we employ machine learning techniques to match stories describing similar situations that differ only by the protagonist's gender. We find no direct causal effect of the protagonist's gender on the received moral judgments, except for stories about ``friendship and relationships'', where male protagonists receive more negative judgments. Our findings complement existing correlational studies and suggest that gender roles may exert greater influence in specific social contexts. These results have implications for understanding sociological constructs and highlight potential biases in data used to train large language models.
title Moral Judgments in Online Discourse are not Biased by Gender
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.12872