Moral Judgments in Online Discourse are not Biased by Gender

TL;DR

This study analyzes gender bias in moral judgments within online discourse, finding minimal overall bias but noting context-specific differences, especially in stories about friendship and relationships.

Contribution

It employs machine learning to isolate gender effects in moral judgments from Reddit data, providing causal insights beyond prior correlational studies.

Findings

No overall gender bias in moral judgments

Male protagonists judged more negatively in friendship stories

Implications for sociological theories and language model training

Abstract

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.