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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

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

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

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

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 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 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 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

LLMs can be socially sycophantic, affirming users when they ask questions like "am I in the wrong?" rather than providing genuine assessment. We hypothesize that this behavior arises from incorrect assumptions about the user, like…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-13 Myra Cheng , Isabel Sieh , Humishka Zope , Sunny Yu , Lujain Ibrahim , Aryaman Arora , Jared Moore , Desmond Ong , Dan Jurafsky , Diyi Yang

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

Sycophancy in Vision-Language Models (VLMs) refers to their tendency to align with user opinions, often at the expense of moral or factual accuracy. While prior studies have explored sycophantic behavior in general contexts, its impact on…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Shadman Rabby , Md. Hefzul Hossain Papon , Sabbir Ahmed , Nokimul Hasan Arif , A. B. M. Ashikur Rahman , Irfan Ahmad

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

We propose a novel way to evaluate sycophancy of LLMs in a direct and neutral way, mitigating various forms of uncontrolled bias, noise, or manipulative language, deliberately injected to prompts in prior works. A key novelty in our…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Shahar Ben Natan , Oren Tsur

Sycophancy, the tendency of large language models to favour user-affirming responses over critical engagement, has been identified as an alignment failure, particularly in high-stakes advisory and social contexts. While prior work has…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2026-04-29 Magda Dubois , Cozmin Ududec , Christopher Summerfield , Lennart Luettgau

Effective human-machine collaboration requires machine learning models to externalize uncertainty, so users can reflect and intervene when necessary. For language models, these representations of uncertainty may be impacted by sycophancy…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-22 Anthony Sicilia , Mert Inan , Malihe Alikhani

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to make sense of ambiguous, open-textured, value-laden terms. Platforms routinely rely on LLMs for content moderation, asking them to label text based on disputed concepts like "hate…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-03-09 Shira Gur-Arieh , Angelina Wang , Sina Fazelpour

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 become embedded in research workflows and organizational decision processes, their effect on analytical reliability remains uncertain. We distinguish two dimensions of analytical reliability -- intelligence (the capacity to reach…

General Economics · Economics 2026-02-26 Ryan Allen , Aticus Peterson

As video large language models (Video-LLMs) become increasingly integrated into real-world applications that demand grounded multimodal reasoning, ensuring their factual consistency and reliability is of critical importance. However,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-01 Wenrui Zhou , Mohamed Hendy , Shu Yang , Qingsong Yang , Zikun Guo , Yuyu Luo , Lijie Hu , Di Wang

Large language models (LLMs) have recently shown strong performance on mathematical benchmarks. At the same time, they are prone to hallucination and sycophancy, often providing convincing but flawed proofs for incorrect mathematical…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-07 Ivo Petrov , Jasper Dekoninck , Martin Vechev