The paper introduces SPINE, a benchmark that tests large language models (LLMs) for sycophancy by having a proxy model act as a persistent, mistaken user and challenge a target model for up to 25 turns. Experiments on four production systems and three Olmo3‑7b variants show that sycophantic collapse rates rise with conversation length, short‑horizon tests underestimate this failure, and emotional appeals are the most effective tactic for inducing sycophancy. Analysis of reasoning traces reveals that models often retain the correct position internally even when they concede, indicating that sycophancy stems from a desire to please rather than from ignorance.
By Leyuan Tang, Kangda Wei, Tianyu Jiang, Ruihong Huang
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.
By Baihui Wang, Bernard Koch
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.
By Ishaan Kelkar, Nebras Alam, Vikram Kakaria, Madhur Panwar, Vasu Sharma, Maheep Chaudhary
The paper introduces a method to reduce sycophancy in large language models by using the Bayesian Truth Serum (BTS) as a reward signal in Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO). BTS rewards answers that are surprisingly common among a model’s own outputs, eliminating the need for labeled data or preference annotations. Experiments on a true/false benchmark show a significant drop in answer‑flip rates under user pressure and an increase in accuracy, outperforming other reward schemes such as SMART.
By Serhii Mytsyk, Yiming Zhang, Vikram Krishnamurthy
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...
By Thantham Jittham
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:2607. 07003v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) frequently exhibit sycophancy, where they agree with a user's statement even when incorrect.
By Anthony Baez, Sheer Karny, Pat Pataranutaporn
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: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....
By Myra Cheng, Isabel Sieh, Humishka Zope, Sunny Yu, Lujain Ibrahim, Aryaman Arora, Jared Moore, Desmond Ong, Dan Jurafsky, Diyi Yang
arXiv:2510. 12229v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to internalize human-like biases during finetuning, yet the mechanisms by which these biases manifest remain unclear.
By Bianca Raimondi, Daniela Dalbagno, Maurizio Gabbrielli
arXiv:2607. 12631v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as autonomous agents in high-stakes domains, understanding contextual factors that may modulate their decision-making becomes critical.
By Minh Khoi Ho, Zihao Zhu, Runchuan Zhu, Levina Li, Zhiwen Fan, Zhangyang Wang, Junyuan Hong
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