Implicit sentiment analysis aims to uncover emotions that are subtly expressed, often obscured by ambiguity and figurative language. To accomplish this task, large language models and multi-step reasoning are needed to identify those sentiments that are not explicitly stated. In this study, we propose a novel Dual Reverse Chain Reasoning (DRCR) framework to enhance the performance of implicit sentiment analysis. Inspired by deductive reasoning, the framework consists of three key steps: 1) hypothesize an emotional polarity and derive a reasoning process, 2) negate the initial hypothesis and derive a new reasoning process, and 3) contrast the two reasoning paths to deduce the final sentiment polarity. Building on this, we also introduce a Triple Reverse Chain Reasoning (TRCR) framework to address the limitations of random hypotheses. Both methods combine contrastive mechanisms and multi-step reasoning, significantly improving the accuracy of implicit sentiment classification. Experimental results demonstrate that both approaches outperform existing methods across various model scales, achieving state-of-the-art performance. This validates the effectiveness of combining contrastive reasoning and multi-step reasoning for implicit sentiment analysis.
@article{arxiv.2503.07140,
title = {Application of Multiple Chain-of-Thought in Contrastive Reasoning for Implicit Sentiment Analysis},
author = {Liwei Yang and Xinying Wang and Xiaotang Zhou and Zhengchao Wu and Ningning Tan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07140},
year = {2025}
}