The paper introduces the Core Sentiment Inventory (CSI), a new personality trait evaluation tool for large language models (LLMs) that addresses reliability and validity issues found in existing methods like the Big Five Inventory (BFI). CSI is designed specifically for LLMs, supports both English and Chinese, and provides detailed psychological portraits of model behavior. Experiments show that CSI captures nuanced behavioral patterns, improves reliability, and correlates strongly (above 0.85) with real-world LLM outputs.
By Huanhuan Ma, Haisong Gong, Xiaoyuan Yi, Xing Xie, Philip S. Yu, Dongkuan Xu
arXiv:2605.29791v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: While Large Language Models (LLMs) can convincingly simulate personas in explicit self-reports, they often deviate in implicit behavioral decisions...
By Yutong Yang, Chenxi Miao, Weikang Li, Yunfang Wu
arXiv:2608.22438v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Persona-conditioned large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate survey responses across diverse domains. However, apparent response...
By Taehyeon An, Jaehyeong Park, Donghyuk Shin
The paper introduces PRISM, a new framework for evaluating how well large language models (LLMs) maintain persona fidelity in dynamic dialogue. PRISM reframes the task as a structured inverse inference problem grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics, breaking persona fidelity into Task Framing, Interpersonal Stance, and Linguistic Style dimensions. Experiments demonstrate that PRISM produces more accurate and stable judgments than existing holistic or static psychometric methods, offering a more reliable and auditable evaluation process.
By Mengfan Li, Zesheng Wei, Xuanhua Shi, Yang Deng
arXiv:2602.20294v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Simulating real personalities with large language models requires grounding generation in authentic personal data. Existing evaluation approa...
By Yu Li, Pranav Narayanan Venkit, Yada Pruksachatkun, Chien-Sheng Wu
The paper examines whether fine‑tuning large language models (LLMs) with personality‑labelled data improves their ability to act as socially interactive agents. Two small open‑weight LLMs were fine‑tuned on a corpus of personality‑labelled social media posts and dialogues, and the resulting models were evaluated in various social interaction scenarios by independent LLM judges. The findings show that the fine‑tuned models do not outperform their baseline counterparts in role‑playing personalities, though they offer comparable text quality and increased linguistic diversity for the Qwen models; low inter‑rater agreement limits confidence in the results, suggesting future work should focus on training data quality and domain alignment.
By Tim Krabbe, Xiaodan Shi
arXiv:2608. 06485v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Personality-conditioned LLM agents (PC-Agents) are increasingly used in emotional support, social simulation, and role-playing, motivating the development of lifelong agents that remain coherent over extended interactions.
By Ming Wang, Peidong Wang, Xiaocui Yang, Daling Wang, Shi Feng, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Ee-Peng Lim
The paper investigates whether human psychometric questionnaires can reliably characterize large language models (LLMs) in everyday interactions. By comparing eight open‑source LLMs’ value and personality profiles from Likert self‑reports (PVQ‑40/21 and BFI‑44/10) with generation probabilities on value‑laden user queries, the authors find substantial divergence between the two methods. The study shows that questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that lead models to respond in socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries lack such cues, and demographic persona prompts shift questionnaire responses but not generation outputs, indicating that questionnaire scores overestimate LLMs’ true behavioral tendencies.
By Woojung Song, Dongmin Choi, Yoonah Park, Jongwook Han, Eun-Ju Lee, Yohan Jo
arXiv:2605. 09159v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Recent work shows that large language models (LLMs) encode behavioral traits ("personas") as linear directions in activation space, often called "persona vectors".
By Nils A. Herrmann, Leander Girrbach, Kirill Bykov, Zeynep Akata
arXiv:2609.22255v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Existing approaches to persona simulation with Large Language Models (LLMs) mostly rely on shallow character descriptions that fail to sustain coherent...
By Rotem Dror, Zohar Elyoseph, Yuval Haber, Elad Refoua, Oshrat Ayalon, Adir Solomon
The paper introduces a three-tier persona vector for user simulation in evaluating LLM agents, comprising 23 dimensions across demographics, behavioral traits, and emotional states, plus a query-complexity overlay. It demonstrates that these nuanced personas generate diverse, scenario-reactive conversations, leading to significant variations in agent goal achievement and compliance across different contexts. The model’s design allows for reproducible, auditable user behavior patterns without relying on learned covariance matrices.
By Rahul Khedar, Eshita, Sneha Teja Sree Reddy Thondapu, Mayank Malhotra, Arup Kumar Das, Jitesh Chandra Mishra, Arun Menon, Avinash Karn, Mouli V
arXiv:2412.12144v5 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Personality assessment through situational judgment tests (SJTs) offers unique advantages over traditional Likert-type self-report scales, ye...
By Chang-Jin Li, Jiyuan Zhang, Yun Tang, Jian Li