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.
arXiv:2609.26579v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A central concern with language models is sycophancy: their tendency to defer to users' views at the expense of independent substantive judgment. In pa...
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...
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.
arXiv:2604.03058v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: LLMs can be socially sycophantic, affirming users when they ask questions like "am I in the wrong?" rather than providing genuine assessment....
arXiv:2605. 21006v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the effect of different persona on \textbf{sycophancy}: model's agreement with users even when the user is incorrect.
arXiv:2604. 02512v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) increasingly exhibit human-like patterns of pragmatic and social reasoning.
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.
arXiv:2608.21377v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Sycophancy in large language models, the tendency to prioritize user agreement over truthful responses, has been documented extensively but studied p...
arXiv:2606. 05183v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models are increasingly deployed as high-stakes advisors, yet standard alignment benchmarks treat sycophancy as a binary failure mode.
arXiv:2607. 21558v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Building socially calibrated large language models, which can learn from others without simply yielding to them, requires more than reducing sycophancy as a one-dimensional failure mode.
arXiv:2603.22161v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Metacognition -- assessing the quality of one's own cognitive performance -- guides adaptive behavior across species. Substantial research demonstr...
arXiv:2601.15436v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We propose a novel perspective for probing LLM sycophancy in a direct and neutral way, mitigating various forms of uncontrolled bias, noise, or man...