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Related papers: Sycophancy in Large Language Models: Causes and Mi…

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Sycophantic response patterns in Large Language Models (LLMs) have been increasingly claimed in the literature. We review methodological challenges in measuring LLM sycophancy and identify five core operationalizations. Despite sycophancy…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-12-02 Jan Batzner , Volker Stocker , Stefan Schmid , Gjergji Kasneci

This study explores the sycophantic tendencies of Large Language Models (LLMs), where these models tend to provide answers that match what users want to hear, even if they are not entirely correct. The motivation behind this exploration…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-08-27 Aswin RRV , Nemika Tyagi , Md Nayem Uddin , Neeraj Varshney , Chitta Baral

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in educational settings as interactive tools for collaboration. However, their tendency toward sycophancy, aligning with user beliefs even when incorrect, raises concerns for learning and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Cansu Koyuturk , Sabrina Guidotti , Dimitri Ognibene

Large Language Models have been demonstrating broadly satisfactory generative abilities for users, which seems to be due to the intensive use of human feedback that refines responses. Nevertheless, suggestibility inherited via human…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-26 Leonardo Ranaldi , Giulia Pucci

Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophantic behaviors -- such as excessive agreement with or flattery of the user -- but it is unclear whether these behaviors arise from a single mechanism or multiple distinct processes. We…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-24 Daniel Vennemeyer , Phan Anh Duong , Tiffany Zhan , Tianyu Jiang

Large language models (LLMs) have achieved strong performance across a wide range of tasks, but they are also prone to sycophancy, the tendency to agree with user statements regardless of validity. Previous research has outlined both the…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Bayan Abdullah Aldahlawi , A. B. M. Ashikur Rahman , Irfan Ahmad

Large language models are often described as sycophantic, in the sense that they appear to flatter users or mirror their beliefs. We argue that this label is conceptually misleading: sycophancy implies motives and strategic intent, which…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Federico Germani , Giovanni Spitale

Sycophancy, the tendency of LLM-based chatbots to express excessive agreement with their users, even when inappropriate, is emerging as a significant risk in human-AI interactions. However, the extent to which this affects human-LLM…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-12 Jessica Y. Bo , Majeed Kazemitabaar , Mengqing Deng , Michael Inzlicht , Ashton Anderson

Sycophancy refers to the tendency of a large language model to align its outputs with the user's perceived preferences, beliefs, or opinions, in order to look favorable, regardless of whether those statements are factually correct. This…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-05 María Victoria Carro

Large Vision-Language Models (LVLMs) have shown significant capability in vision-language understanding. However, one critical issue that persists in these models is sycophancy, where models are unduly influenced by leading or deceptive…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Yunpu Zhao , Rui Zhang , Junbin Xiao , Changxin Ke , Ruibo Hou , Yifan Hao , Ling Li

Sycophancy (overly agreeable or flattering behavior) poses a fundamental challenge for human-AI collaboration, particularly in high-stakes decision-making domains such as health, law, and education. A central difficulty in studying…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Katherine Atwell , Pedram Heydari , Anthony Sicilia , Malihe Alikhani

In the study of LLMs, sycophancy represents a prevalent hallucination that poses significant challenges to these models. Specifically, LLMs often fail to adhere to original correct responses, instead blindly agreeing with users' opinions,…

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · Computer Science 2024-10-16 Shuo Li , Tao Ji , Xiaoran Fan , Linsheng Lu , Leyi Yang , Yuming Yang , Zhiheng Xi , Rui Zheng , Yuran Wang , Xiaohui Zhao , Tao Gui , Qi Zhang , Xuanjing Huang

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophancy, distorting responses to align with user beliefs, notably by readily agreeing with user counterarguments. Paradoxically, LLMs are increasingly adopted as successful evaluative agents for…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Sungwon Kim , Daniel Khashabi

Large Language Models (LLMs) are expected to provide helpful and harmless responses, yet they often exhibit sycophancy--conforming to user beliefs regardless of factual accuracy or ethical soundness. Prior research on sycophancy has…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-02 Jiseung Hong , Grace Byun , Seungone Kim , Kai Shu , Jinho D. Choi

AI sycophancy has become a prominent concern in large language model (LLM) research. Yet the term lacks a consistent definition and has been applied to behaviors ranging from agreeing with a user's false claim to excessively praising the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Meryl Ye , Lujain Ibrahim , Jessica Y. Bo , Myra Cheng , Ida Mattsson , Daniel Vennemeyer , Robert Kraut , Steve Rathje

AI sycophancy is increasingly recognized as a harmful alignment, but research remains fragmented and underdeveloped at the conceptual level. This article redefines AI sycophancy as the tendency of large language models (LLMs) and other…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-09-29 Lihua Du , Xing Lyu , Lezi Xie , Bo Feng

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophantic behavior, agreeing with user-stated opinions even when those contradict factual knowledge. While prior work has documented this tendency, the internal mechanisms that enable such…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-11-13 Keyu Wang , Jin Li , Shu Yang , Zhuoran Zhang , Di Wang

Large Language Models (LLMs) often exhibit highly agreeable and reinforcing conversational styles, also known as AI-sycophancy. Although this pattern arises from training objectives that reward user satisfaction over accuracy, it may become…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-18 Zeyi Lu , Angelica Henestrosa , Pavel Chizhov , Ivan P. Yamshchikov

Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress made in large language models (LLMs). Such advancements, while garnering significant attention, have concurrently elicited various concerns. The potential of these models is undeniably vast;…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2023-09-27 Tianhao Shen , Renren Jin , Yufei Huang , Chuang Liu , Weilong Dong , Zishan Guo , Xinwei Wu , Yan Liu , Deyi Xiong

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied in educational, clinical, and professional settings, but their tendency for sycophancy -- prioritizing user agreement over independent reasoning -- poses risks to reliability. This study…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-22 Aaron Fanous , Jacob Goldberg , Ank A. Agarwal , Joanna Lin , Anson Zhou , Roxana Daneshjou , Sanmi Koyejo
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