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Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

-cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in…

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Arxiv 8 versions
  1. Current Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  2. Version 7 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “-cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    -cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  3. Version 6 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  4. Version 5 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “-cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    -cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  5. Version 4 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  6. Version 3 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “-cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    -cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  7. Version 2 Summary changed

    1 new sentence, beginning: “We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM…”

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

  8. As first published

    Human Psychometric Questionnaires Mischaracterize LLM Behavior

    -cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. The two profiles diverge substantially. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities. We find that established questionnaire items contain explicit lexical cues that allow models to recognize the target construct and respond in alignment-consistent, socially desirable ways, whereas realistic user queries contain far less recognizable cues. In addition, demographic persona prompts shift models' responses to human questionnaires in ways consistent with real human patterns, but no such shifts appear in the generation setting, highlighting that human questionnaires overestimate LLMs' ability to faithfully reproduce expected psychological traits when role-playing demographic personas. Overall, our study indicates that questionnaire scores alone should not be treated as evidence of LLMs' response tendencies in realistic user interactions, and supports generation-probability profiling with ecologically valid items as a complementary behavioral measure.

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Blended score 0.398 — every figure below is computed, none of it is editorial.
FactorWeightScore ContributionWhere it came from
Corroboration 0.35 0.39 +0.135 34% 1 independent org on the story. Tier-3 aggregators never corroborate — they can show something is circulating, never that it is true.
Source trustleads 0.25 0.85 +0.212 53% arXiv is the highest-trust source on this story and is first-party — the organisation announcing its own news. Trust is taken from the best source, not averaged.
Pickup rate 0.20 0.00 +0.000 0% One counted organisation, so there is no spread to measure — nothing has picked this up to set a rate.
Freshness 0.20 0.25 +0.050 13% Halves every 10 hours from the newest item on the story. This is the only factor that rewards a story for nothing more than being recent.

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Brunger, Clifford A. · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · illustrative
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What happened

-cross Abstract: We examine whether human psychometric questionnaires can serve as reliable tools for characterizing and predicting LLM behavior in everyday user interactions. We analyze eight open-source LLMs by comparing their value and personality profiles derived from two different methods: Likert self-reports on established questionnaires (PVQ-40/21 and BFI-44/10) and generation probabilities over value-laden responses to everyday user queries. Within-construct item consistency, often cited as evidence of stable LLM dispositions, disappears in generation probabilities.

1independent orgs
40story score
0velocity
85source trust
4passes seen

How this story arrived

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