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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

Despite growing attention to LLM sycophancy from researchers and developers, users' own experiences of this behavior remain underexplored. We examine how everyday users experience AI sycophancy through Reddit discussions. Using our ODR…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-05-06 Kazi Noshin , Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed , Sharifa Sultana

Reasoning models frequently agree with incorrect user suggestions -- a behavior known as sycophancy. However, it is unclear where in the reasoning trace this agreement originates and how strong the commitment is. We introduce…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Jacek Duszenko

Personalization of Large Language Models (LLMs) often assumes users hold static preferences that reflect globally in all tasks. In reality, humans hold dynamic preferences that change depending on the context. As users interact with an LLM…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-08-08 Tae Soo Kim , Yoonjoo Lee , Yoonah Park , Jiho Kim , Young-Ho Kim , Juho Kim

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

Sycophancy is an undesirable behavior where models tailor their responses to follow a human user's view even when that view is not objectively correct (e.g., adapting liberal views once a user reveals that they are liberal). In this paper,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-16 Jerry Wei , Da Huang , Yifeng Lu , Denny Zhou , Quoc V. Le

Extended interaction with large language models (LLMs) has been linked to the reinforcement of delusional beliefs, a phenomenon attracting growing clinical and public concern. Yet most empirical work evaluates model safety in brief…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-04-24 Luke Nicholls , Robert Hutto , Zephrah Soto , Hamilton Morrin , Thomas Pollak , Raj Korpan , Cheryl Carmichael

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as conversational partners for learning, yet the interactional dynamics supporting users' learning and engagement are understudied. We analyze the linguistic and interactional features from…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-13 Shaz Furniturewala , Gerard Christopher Yeo , Kokil Jaidka

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

While both agent interaction and personalisation are vibrant topics in research on large language models (LLMs), there has been limited focus on the effect of language interaction on the behaviour of persona-conditioned LLM agents. Such an…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-02-06 Ivar Frisch , Mario Giulianelli

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in clinical and care settings. This exploratory study investigates whether LLMs exhibit sycophantic behavior - adapting their responses to social expectation signals rather than maintaining…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Christian Kolb

Embodiment in conversational agents (CAs) refers to the physical or visual representation of these agents, which can significantly influence user perception and interaction. Limited work has been done examining the effect of embodiment on…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2025-06-04 Kyra Wang , Boon-Kiat Quek , Jessica Goh , Dorien Herremans

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities across a wide range of natural language processing tasks. However, their tendency to exhibit sycophantic behavior - excessively agreeing with or flattering users - poses…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-01-30 Lars Malmqvist

Sycophancy, an excessive tendency of AI models to agree with user input at the expense of factual accuracy or in contradiction of visual evidence, poses a critical and underexplored challenge for multimodal large language models (MLLMs).…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-12-23 A. B. M. Ashikur Rahman , Saeed Anwar , Muhammad Usman , Irfan Ahmad , Ajmal Mian

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

Telling an LLM to "be enthusiastic" raises its sycophancy rate from 30\% to 50\% on a lightly-aligned model, but has zero effect on a strongly-aligned one. We define this gap as the alignment floor,…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Xing Zhang , Guanghui Wang , Yanwei Cui , Wei Qiu , Ziyuan Li , Bing Zhu , Peiyang He

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in multi-turn dialogue and other sustained interactive scenarios, it is essential to understand how extended context affects their performance. Popular benchmarks, focusing primarily…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Robert Hankache , Kingsley Nketia Acheampong , Liang Song , Marek Brynda , Raad Khraishi , Greig A. Cowan

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) 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 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