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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

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

Both the general public and academic communities have raised concerns about sycophancy, the phenomenon of artificial intelligence (AI) excessively agreeing with or flattering users. Yet, beyond isolated media reports of severe consequences,…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2025-10-03 Myra Cheng , Cinoo Lee , Pranav Khadpe , Sunny Yu , Dyllan Han , Dan Jurafsky

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

Large language models internalize a structural trade-off between truthfulness and obsequious flattery, emerging from reward optimization that conflates helpfulness with polite submission. This latent bias, known as sycophancy, manifests as…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Sanskar Pandey , Ruhaan Chopra , Angkul Puniya , Sohom Pal

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

Alignment techniques often inadvertently induce sycophancy in LLMs. While prior studies studied this behaviour in direct-answer settings, the role of Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning remains under-explored: does it serve as a logical…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Zhaoxin Feng , Zheng Chen , Jianfei Ma , Yip Tin Po , Emmanuele Chersoni , Bo Li

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

As LLMs expand from assistance to decision support, a dangerous pattern emerges: fluent agreement without calibrated judgment. Low-friction assistants can become sycophantic, baking in implicit assumptions and pushing verification costs…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-26 Raunak Jain

LLM-powered conversational agents are increasingly influencing our decision-making, raising concerns about "sycophancy" - the tendency for LLMs to excessively agree with users even at the expense of truthfulness. While prior work has…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Yuan Sun , Ting Wang

Despite the remarkable capabilities of large language models, current training paradigms inadvertently foster \textit{sycophancy}, i.e., the tendency of a model to agree with or reinforce user-provided information even when it's factually…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-09-23 Mohammad Beigi , Ying Shen , Parshin Shojaee , Qifan Wang , Zichao Wang , Chandan Reddy , Ming Jin , Lifu Huang

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

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) often display sycophancy, a tendency toward excessive agreeability. This behavior poses significant challenges for multi-agent debating systems (MADS) that rely on productive disagreement to refine arguments and…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Binwei Yao , Chao Shang , Wanyu Du , Jianfeng He , Ruixue Lian , Yi Zhang , Hang Su , Sandesh Swamy , Yanjun Qi

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly consulted for high-stakes life advice, yet they lack standard safeguards against providing confident but misguided responses. This creates risks of sycophancy and over-confidence. This paper…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Joshua Adrian Cahyono , Saran Subramanian

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 exhibit sycophancy: prioritizing agreeableness over correctness. Current remedies evaluate reasoning outcomes: RLHF rewards correct answers, self-correction critiques outputs. All require ground truth, which is often…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Edward Y. Chang

This study examines how user-provided suggestions affect Large Language Models (LLMs) in a simulated educational context, where sycophancy poses significant risks. Testing five different LLMs from the OpenAI GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 model classes…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-06-13 Chuck Arvin

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