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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

We investigate how the presence and type of interaction context shapes sycophancy in LLMs. While real-world interactions allow models to mirror a user's values, preferences, and self-image, prior work often studies sycophancy in zero-shot…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Shomik Jain , Charlotte Park , Matt Viana , Ashia Wilson , Dana Calacci

Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophancy: agreement with user stance even when it conflicts with the model's opinion. While prior work has mostly studied this in single-agent settings, it remains underexplored in collaborative…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Vira Kasprova , Amruta Parulekar , Abdulrahman AlRabah , Krishna Agaram , Ritwik Garg , Sagar Jha , Nimet Beyza Bozdag , Dilek Hakkani-Tur

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 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 (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) 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

Given the increased use of LLMs in financial systems today, it becomes important to evaluate the safety and robustness of such systems. One failure mode that LLMs frequently display in general domain settings is that of sycophancy. That is,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Zhenyu Zhao , Aparna Balagopalan , Adi Agrawal , Dilshoda Yergasheva , Waseem Alshikh , Daniel M. Bikel

Large Language Model (LLM) sycophancy is a growing concern. The current literature has largely examined sycophancy in contexts with clear right and wrong answers, like coding. However, AI is increasingly being used for emotional support and…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Jean Rehani , Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello , Dariya Ovsyannikova , Ashton Anderson , Michael Inzlicht

LLMs are known to exhibit sycophancy: agreeing with and flattering users, even at the cost of correctness. Prior work measures sycophancy only as direct agreement with users' explicitly stated beliefs that can be compared to a ground truth.…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Myra Cheng , Sunny Yu , Cinoo Lee , Pranav Khadpe , Lujain Ibrahim , Dan Jurafsky

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

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 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

This position paper argues that sycophancy in LLMs is a boundary failure between social alignment and epistemic integrity. Existing work often operationalizes sycophancy through external behavior such as agreement with incorrect user…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-08 Jiechen Li , Catherine A. Barry , Rishika Randev , Janet Chen , Ella Jorgensen , Brinnae Bent

Large Language Models (LLMs) are prone to sycophantic behavior, uncritically conforming to user beliefs. As models increasingly condition responses on user-specific context (personality traits, preferences, conversation history), they gain…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Sean W. Kelley , Christoph Riedl

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

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

Large language models (LLMs), while increasingly used in domains requiring factual rigor, often display a troubling behavior: sycophancy, the tendency to align with user beliefs regardless of correctness. This tendency is reinforced by…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-20 Kaiwei Zhang , Qi Jia , Zijian Chen , Wei Sun , Xiangyang Zhu , Chunyi Li , Dandan Zhu , Guangtao Zhai

Large language models (LLMs) are known to abandon their initial stance to conform to user pushback. While prior research largely attributes this behavior to sycophancy learned during reinforcement learning from human feedback, we…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Kevin H. Guo , Chao Yan , Avinash Baidya , Katherine Brown , Xiang Gao , Juming Xiong , Zhijun Yin , Bradley A. Malin
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