arXiv Computation and Language

Receptiveness, Not Sycophancy: Distinguishing Engagement from Deference in Language Models

arXiv AI
Jul 31

Ask don't tell: Reducing sycophancy in large language models

arXiv:2602. 23971v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Sycophancy, the tendency of large language models to favour user-affirming responses over critical engagement, has been identified as an alignment failure, particularly in high-stakes advisory and social contexts.

By Magda Dubois, Cozmin Ududec, Christopher Summerfield, Lennart Luettgau
arXiv AI
Aug 26

SyPS: Measuring Sycophancy Prompt Sensitivity in Large Language Models

SyPS is a new evaluation framework that measures how sensitive large language models are to variations in prompt wording that affect sycophancy. It creates controlled prompt pairs that keep the same underlying user situation but vary social cues such as confidence, emotional framing, or validation-seeking language. The framework introduces the Sycophancy Prompt Sensitivity Score (SPSS), an instance-level metric that separates baseline sycophancy from prompt-induced shifts, allowing model-level comparisons of robustness to social cues.

By Lijia Huang, Yao Fu, Sihao Ren
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 24

Affective Context Amplifies Sycophancy in LLM Responses

arXiv:2608.21242v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As conversational companions, large language models (LLMs) often have access to users' emotional states. We study how this affective context modulates...

By Jiayi Li, Sanjana Menon, Brett Frischmann, Shomir Wilson, Sarah Rajtmajer
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 8

Dissociating the Internal Representations of Sycophancy in LLMs

Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently exhibit sycophancy, where they agree with a user's statement even when incorrect. While sycophancy is often treated as a single defined behavior, it can manifest in substantially distinct ways and circumstances, raising the question of whether this multi-faceted nature is reflected in its internal mechanisms.

arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 15

Sweet Talkers: How Query Formulation Shapes Sycophancy in Romantic Relationship Advice

The paper introduces the Romantic Relationship Advice-Seeking Prompts (RRASP) dataset, comprising 2,400 prompts across five relationship themes, to study how query formulation affects sycophancy in large language models. Using the ELEPHANT framework, the authors evaluated GPT‑5 Mini and Gemini 3 Flash, finding that grammatical mood alone does not drive sycophantic behavior, whereas perspective‑driven framing does, with models increasingly accepting user premises over successive turns. Gemini 3 Flash showed smaller increases in moral sycophancy than GPT‑5 Mini, indicating greater resistance to reinforcing ethically problematic positions.

By Helena Choi, Edric Castel Hao, Karl Bautista, Francis Gabriel Magleo, Renzo Panti, Danielle Beatrice Olalia