Are We Judgmental? Comparing CMSC320 Student vs. Reddit AITA Judgments

OC Study
Posted by u/AndGoliath • Just Now

📝 1. The Setup / TL;DR

We wanted to see if Computer Science students (specifically from CMSC320 sections) judge situations differently than the general Reddit r/AITA community. Students took a survey with modified AITA posts (rephrased as "Am I a Jerk?", sometimes with genders swapped). We compared their answers to the judgments found in the comments of the original Reddit posts.

Spoiler: Initial thoughts suggested similarity, but the actual data showed significant differences.

🔬 2. How We Did It (Data & Methods)

We grabbed comments from 5 original r/AITA posts that matched the survey questions. We automatically sorted comments based on the standard AITA acronyms: "YTA" (You're The Asshole), "NTA" (Not The Asshole), "INFO" (Information Needed), "NAH" (No Assholes Here), and "ESH" (Everyone Sucks Here).

The student survey data used different labels: "Not a jerk", "Mildly a jerk", and "Strongly a jerk". To compare apples-to-apples(ish), we converted both sets of labels into three simple categories:

  • YTA: You're The Asshole / Strongly a jerk
  • Neither: ESH / INFO / NAH / Mildly a jerk
  • NTA: Not The Asshole / Not a jerk

Here's the conversion cheat sheet:

Table 1: Label Conversion
Original Source Original Label New Label
Reddit AITAYTAYTA
ESHNeither
INFONeither
NAHNeither
NTANTA
CMSC320 SurveyStrongly a jerkYTA
Mildly a jerkNeither
Not a jerkNTA

📊 3. What We Found (Results)

After sorting and standardizing, we ran Chi-Squared tests. The results were clear: there was a statistically significant difference in how the CMSC320 students judged the situations compared to the Redditors on AITA for all five posts tested.

Here's the raw data and the test results (low p-values mean the difference is unlikely due to chance):

Wedding Question Results

CategoryNTANeitherYTA
Reddit Wedding1081692
Student Wedding27911558
p-value = 2.92 × 10-19

Cat Question Results

CategoryNTANeitherYTA
Reddit Cat291253203
Student Cat19317788
p-value = 0.00679

Child Support Question Results

CategoryNTANeitherYTA
Reddit CS7513146
Student CS27812051
p-value = 2.42 × 10-44

Plane Babysit Question Results

CategoryNTANeitherYTA
Reddit Plane453127575
Student Planes86191177
p-value = 9.37 × 10-46

Trust Fund Question Results

CategoryNTANeitherYTA
Reddit Trust33527
Student Trusts22015683
p-value = 9.05 × 10-7

YTA vs. NTA Ratio

This chart shows the ratio of YTA votes to NTA votes for each group and question. A higher bar means more "Asshole" judgments relative to "Not the Asshole" judgments.

Notice how the student ratio (Red bars) is lower in 4 out of 5 cases, suggesting they lean less towards the YTA judgment compared to Redditors (Blue bars).

🫵 4. Your Turn! How Do You Judge?

Read the brief scenarios below (based on the posts used in the study) and give your judgment. We'll show you how you compare to the CMSC320 students and the r/AITA commenters.

Wedding Question

Scenario Summary: A same-sex couple received a homophobic decline to their wedding invitation. They want to donate the money saved by this couple's absence (food/drink costs) to an LGBTQ+ charity specifically in the declining couple's name, potentially notifying them. Is making the donation *in their name* an okay action?

Cat Question

Scenario Summary: Someone found a lost cat for which a $500 reward was advertised on posters. When the owner arrived, they claimed the reward wasn't real and was just bait. The finder refused to return the cat until the initially promised $500 reward was paid. Was it wrong to withhold the cat until the advertised reward was paid?

Child Support Question

Scenario Summary: A mother receives $2000/month child support for one of her four children (who also has a trust fund). She uses part of this money for expenses benefiting all her children (e.g., eldest's tuition, shared household costs, trips). A friend calls her wrong for not using the money solely on the designated child. Is using the support this way acceptable?

Plane Babysit Question

Scenario Summary: After expressing discomfort but still being pressured by their sister to help babysit two young children on a 10-hour flight, the person secretly upgraded their own seat to business class to avoid the duty, only revealing this at the airport. Was secretly upgrading to avoid the unwanted babysitting okay?

Trust Fund Question

Scenario Summary: A man from a wealthy family (trust fund, allowance) lives modestly and splits expenses 50/50 with his girlfriend, who comes from a poor background and has loans. He didn't disclose his full financial situation. After she found out (via expensive gifts he received), she called him wrong for making her pay half while being privileged. Was he wrong to hide his wealth and split costs equally?

🤔 5. So, Are "We" Judgmental? (Conclusion)

Okay, there are some caveats (confounders). The way data was collected was different (survey vs comments), the original posts were public while the survey was private, Prof. Morawski's paraphrasing might have changed things, and the "Mildly a jerk" option added nuance not present in AITA votes.

BUT, even with those points, the evidence strongly suggests a real difference between how CMSC320 students and Redditors judged these scenarios. Importantly, in 4 out of 5 cases, the students were *less* likely to label someone the "asshole" (relative to NTA) compared to Redditors.

The Verdict: Based on this study, "we" (CMSC320 students) appear to be *less* judgmental than the r/AITA community, at least for these specific situations.

Future Ideas: To get better data, future surveys could match the AITA questions more closely, or maybe even analyze actual comments from students given Reddit accounts (ethically tricky!).

💬 Comments (3) 💾 Save ... More

Comments

u/vonNeumann • 2 hr. ago

Wow, great paper

u/Einstein • 1 hr. ago

ikr

u/Gandalf • 1 hr. ago

Just incredible analysis