The study investigates how Large Language Models (LLMs) acting as surrogate consumers are influenced by marketing pricing cues such as just‑below pricing and promotional framing. Using a tool called "Tool‑Lab" to trace information acquisition, the researchers found that when no cost is imposed, pricing cues rarely mislead LLMs, but when acquisition costs are introduced under a vague goal prompt, LLMs tend to omit important diagnostic attributes and make suboptimal choices similar to human heuristics. The findings suggest that marketing heuristics in AI‑driven shopping are shaped more by storefront information architecture than by inherent LLM limitations.
By Davood Wadi, Yu Ma
arXiv:2608. 12339v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language models (LLMs) were found to be susceptible to a host of social, affective, and cognitive biases.
By Eldad Yechiam, Adi Tarabeih
The study evaluates mentalization—the capacity to infer others’ beliefs and intentions—in large language models (LLMs) using two economic games and cognitive computational modeling. Researchers tested 2,099 LLM agents from four model families (DeepSeek, GPT‑4.1, GPT‑5, Gemini 2.0 Flash) against opponents of varying sophistication, comparing their performance to 251 human participants. Results show that LLMs exhibit distinct mentalizing behaviors that vary by model provider and size, with strategic prompting generally enhancing performance; notably, GPT‑5 agents adapt their recursive reasoning depth to match opponent sophistication, outperforming humans in one task.
By Aamir Sohail, Xintong Zhong, Arkady Konovalov, Patricia L. Lockwood, Lei Zhang
arXiv:2509. 02910v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) increasingly act on people's behalf: they write emails, buy groceries, and book restaurants.
By Sandra C. Matz, Kimberly Klugescheid, C. Blaine Horton, Sofie Goethals
arXiv:2601. 11049v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We examine whether large language models (LLMs) can predict biased decision-making in conversational settings, and whether their predictions capture not only human cognitive biases but also how those effects change under cognitive load.
By Stephen Pilli, Vivek Nallur
arXiv:2602. 09802v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in applications such as travel assistance and purchasing support, they are often required to make subjective choices on behalf of users in settings where no objectively correct answer exists.
By Manon Reusens, Sofie Goethals, Toon Calders, David Martens