English

Evaluating Large Language Models with Psychometrics

Computation and Language 2025-10-20 v2

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated exceptional capabilities in solving various tasks, progressively evolving into general-purpose assistants. The increasing integration of LLMs into society has sparked interest in whether they exhibit psychological patterns, and whether these patterns remain consistent across different contexts -- questions that could deepen the understanding of their behaviors. Inspired by psychometrics, this paper presents a {comprehensive benchmark for quantifying psychological constructs of LLMs}, encompassing psychological dimension identification, assessment dataset design, and assessment with results validation. Our work identifies five key psychological constructs -- personality, values, emotional intelligence, theory of mind, and self-efficacy -- assessed through a suite of 13 datasets featuring diverse scenarios and item types. We uncover significant discrepancies between LLMs' self-reported traits and their response patterns in real-world scenarios, revealing complexities in their behaviors. Our findings also show that some preference-based tests, originally designed for humans, could not solicit reliable responses from LLMs. This paper offers a thorough psychometric assessment of LLMs, providing insights into reliable evaluation and potential applications in AI and social sciences.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.17675,
  title  = {Evaluating Large Language Models with Psychometrics},
  author = {Yuan Li and Yue Huang and Hongyi Wang and Ying Cheng and Xiangliang Zhang and James Zou and Lichao Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.17675},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:18:52.666Z