Can Large Language Models (LLMs) simulate humans in making important decisions? Recent research has unveiled the potential of using LLMs to develop role-playing language agents (RPLAs), mimicking mainly the knowledge and tones of various characters. However, imitative decision-making necessitates a more nuanced understanding of personas. In this paper, we benchmark the ability of LLMs in persona-driven decision-making. Specifically, we investigate whether LLMs can predict characters' decisions provided by the preceding stories in high-quality novels. Leveraging character analyses written by literary experts, we construct a dataset LIFECHOICE comprising 1,462 characters' decision points from 388 books. Then, we conduct comprehensive experiments on LIFECHOICE, with various LLMs and RPLA methodologies. The results demonstrate that state-of-the-art LLMs exhibit promising capabilities in this task, yet substantial room for improvement remains. Hence, we further propose the CHARMAP method, which adopts persona-based memory retrieval and significantly advances RPLAs on this task, achieving 5.03% increase in accuracy.
@article{arxiv.2404.12138,
title = {Character is Destiny: Can Role-Playing Language Agents Make Persona-Driven Decisions?},
author = {Rui Xu and Xintao Wang and Jiangjie Chen and Siyu Yuan and Xinfeng Yuan and Jiaqing Liang and Zulong Chen and Xiaoqing Dong and Yanghua Xiao},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.12138},
year = {2024}
}