arXiv Machine Learning

Conditional Cognitive Biases in LLMs: How Biased User Turns Modulate In-Context Reasoning

arXiv:2608. 05166v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present an evaluation of cognitive bias expression in state-of-the-art instruction-tuned LLMs under realistic multi-turn interaction settings.

arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 27

Adaptive Triggering for Bias Correction in LLM Reasoning

The paper introduces an adaptive triggering mechanism for bias correction in large language model (LLM) reasoning. By framing bias intervention as an online change‑point detection problem, the authors update a CUSUM statistic at each step using either a white‑box next‑token probability signal or a black‑box LLM judge signal, and inject corrective prompts only when the accumulated evidence exceeds a calibrated threshold. Experiments on gpt‑4o‑mini and six open‑weight models show that adaptive black‑box triggering restores most of the accuracy lost by fixed‑interval interventions while reducing the number of corrections, whereas the white‑box signal improves ambiguous‑item accuracy but can hurt disambiguated‑item accuracy due to difficulty distinguishing stereotype reliance from correct evidence.

By Nayoung Kim, Mickey Mancenido, Huan Liu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

Moral Sensitivity in LLMs: A Tiered Evaluation of Contextual Bias via Behavioral Profiling and Mechanistic Interpretability

arXiv:2605. 03217v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in settings that require nuanced ethical reasoning, yet existing bias evaluations treat model outputs as simply "biased" or "unbiased.

By Yash Aggarwal, Atmika Gorti, Vinija Jain, Aman Chadha, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Manas Gaur
arXiv AI
Aug 12

Do LLMs Benefit From Their Own Words?

arXiv:2602. 24287v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In multi-turn conversations, large language models typically condition on the full conversation history: both past user prompts and assistant responses.

By Jenny Y. Huang, Leshem Choshen, Wei Sun, Omar Khattab, Ram\'on Fernandez Astudillo, Mehul Damani, Tamara Broderick, Jacob Andreas
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Deep and shallow biases in language models

The paper introduces a bias depth score to differentiate between stable model preferences (Deep biases) and prompt‑dependent responses (Shallow biases) in large language models. By analyzing 4,442 opinion prompts across four models, it finds that only about a quarter of concentrated preferences persist after scenario reframing, indicating that most are shallow. The study shows Deep biases are more often inherited from pretraining and harder to remove through fine‑tuning or prompt‑based debiasing, highlighting the need to distinguish learned biases from prompt artifacts.

By An Vo, Vy Tuong Dang, Khai-Nguyen Nguyen, Emilio Villa-Cueva, Thamar Solorio, Anh Totti Nguyen, Daeyoung Kim
arXiv AI
Sep 2

BiasGym: A Simple and Generalizable Framework for Analyzing and Removing Biases through Injection

BiasGym is a cost‑effective, generalizable framework that injects specific biases into large language models via token‑based fine‑tuning while keeping the model frozen. It then uses two debiasing methods—Scope and Steer—to identify and suppress or redirect the components responsible for biased behavior. The framework enables consistent bias elicitation, precise localization of bias associations, and targeted debiasing without harming downstream performance, and it has been shown to reduce real‑world stereotypes such as labeling Italians as reckless drivers.

By Sekh Mainul Islam, Nadav Borenstein, Siddhesh Milind Pawar, Haeun Yu, Arnav Arora, Isabelle Augenstein
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 20

How Does Alignment Tuning Shape Representations of Sycophancy and Related Cue-Induced Biases in LLMs?

Modern LLMs are alarmingly susceptible to surprisingly simple immaterial changes of input prompts: a casual hint, an incorrectly labeled few-shot example, or a fake prior assistant turn often flips an originally correct answer. We study where this susceptibility, spanning sycophancy and related cue-induced biases, lives inside the model.