arXiv Computation and Language

LLMs Infer Cultural Context but Fail to Apply It When Responding

The paper introduces CAPRI, a dataset of conversations designed to test whether large language models (LLMs) can adapt their responses to users’ cultural backgrounds. Experiments show that while LLMs can infer a user’s cultural context and recall relevant conventions, they frequently fail to apply this knowledge when generating answers unless explicitly prompted to do so. The study also finds that LLMs’ cultural adaptations improve as more cues are provided, yet their default priors are not culture‑neutral and sometimes reflect the model’s country of origin.

arXiv AI
Oct 5

CuBEs: Culturally-Situated Behavioral Evaluations and the Limitations of Culture-Blind LLM Judges

CuBEs introduces culturally‑situated behavioral evaluations for large language models, adding cultural context to test scenarios and assessments. The authors built a human‑labeled dataset covering 12 cultures, revealing significant cross‑cultural differences that one‑size‑fits‑all judgments miss. Evaluating 13 LLMs shows that culturally situated tests uncover varied behaviors, such as Western political bias versus non‑Western religious or colonial biases, which standard evaluations overlook.

By Hoda Ayad, Tanu Mitra, Abhishek Mukherji
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

Why are all LLMs Obsessed with Japanese Culture? On the Hidden Cultural and Regional Biases of LLMs

The paper investigates cultural biases in large language models (LLMs) by introducing the Culture-Related Open Questions (CROQ) dataset, which contains 24‑language questions about generic culture. Experiments reveal that LLMs disproportionately favor Japan in their responses, especially when prompted in high‑resource languages, while low‑resource languages tend to highlight countries where the language is official. The study also finds that these biases emerge after supervised fine‑tuning rather than during pre‑training.

By Joseba Fernandez de Landa, Carla Perez-Almendros, Jose Camacho-Collados
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 31

CultureConverse: A Multilingual Multi-turn Simulation Harness for Culturally Grounded Assistance in East and Southeast Asia

arXiv:2608.28405v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Current cultural evaluations for large language models (LLMs) often reduce culture to single-turn factual recall via MCQs, failing to capture a common...

By Bryan Chen Zhengyu Tan, Weihua Zheng, Thong T. Doan, Bich Ngoc Doan, Jia Wang Peh, Xiaoyuan Yi, Jing Yao, Xing Xie, Nancy F. Chen, Zhengyuan Liu, JinYeong Bak, Wafi Shamdi, Soo Kai Chie, Liew Yu Siong, Aina Azyyati Binti Mohamad Rezal, Lew Yan Yan Vanessa, Huadan Wu, Dylan Raharja, Nadya Yuki Wangsajaya, Akane Fukushige, Kazushi Kato, Koji Inoue, Tatsuya Kawahara, Jaehyung Seo, Dongjun Kim, Seungyoon Lee, Zi Haur Pang, Rui Yang Tan, Charibeth Ko Cheng, Maria Regina Justina Estuar, Jann Railey Montalan, Pham Minh Duc, Roy Ka-Wei Lee
arXiv AI
Jun 8

The Masked Advantage: Uncovering Local-Language Access to Cultural Knowledge in LLMs

arXiv:2606. 07422v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models are increasingly used to answer culturally grounded questions across languages, yet it remains unclear whether local cultural knowledge is better accessed through English or the local language.

By Yang Zhang, Xiao Fei, Amr Mohamed, Sarah Almeida Carneiro, Mersin Konomi, Mingmeng Geng, Ahmed Asaad, Guokan Shang, Michalis Vazirgiannis
arXiv AI
Sep 3

Accurate in space, unreliable in time: how LLMs represent national cultural change

The paper investigates how large language models (LLMs) represent national cultural change over time, using more than two decades of World Values Survey data and the Inglehart‑Welzel cultural map. It finds that while LLMs generally place countries near their most recent surveyed positions, their representations lag behind current data, under‑capture the magnitude of change, introduce spurious movements, and rarely reproduce trajectory reversals. These temporal inaccuracies reveal a flattening effect that limits the models’ cultural awareness and raises concerns for evaluation, representational harms, and governance of culturally aware AI systems.

By Yalda Daryani, Miranda Bogen, Madeleine I. G. Daepp
arXiv AI
Sep 30

Population Fidelity: Evaluating Population Representativeness in LLMs

The paper introduces Population Fidelity, an evaluation framework for assessing how well large language models (LLMs) represent human population attitudes. It focuses on three dimensions: group-level accuracy, between-group variation, and the structure of that variation. Using the framework, the authors replicate a prior study on machine bias and test cultural fine-tuning, finding that while fine-tuning improves overall alignment, it does not enhance representation of within-population differences.

By Neemias B. da Silva, Martin Lukk, Ali Sutani, Abhishek Moturu, Harris Yang, Daniel Silver, Matt Ratto, Thiago H. Silva
arXiv Computation and Language
3d ago

MBBQ: A Dataset for Cross-Lingual Comparison of Stereotypes in Generative LLMs

MBBQ (Multilingual Bias Benchmark for Question-answering) is a curated extension of the English BBQ dataset that includes Dutch, Spanish, and Turkish, designed to measure stereotypes across these languages while controlling for cultural differences and task accuracy. The dataset also provides a parallel control set to assess question-answering performance independently of bias. Experiments with several open-source and proprietary LLMs show that non‑English languages can exhibit greater bias than English, and cross‑lingual bias differences persist except in the most accurate models.

By Vera Neplenbroek, Arianna Bisazza, Raquel Fern\'andez
arXiv AI
Aug 18

CulTrace: Tracing Internal Cultural Reasoning in Large Language Models

arXiv:2508. 08879v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The growing deployment of large language models (LLMs) across diverse cultural contexts necessitates a deeper understanding of models' hidden representations of different cultures.

By Haeun Yu, Arnav Arora Seogyeong Jeong, Nadav Borenstein, Siddhesh Pawar, Jisu Shin, Jiho Jin, Junho Myung, Alice Oh, Isabelle Augenstein