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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

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

Despite strong medical benchmark accuracy, LLMs can exhibit severe multi-turn sycophancy in clinical dialogue, abandoning initial correct diagnosis under escalating pressure. We propose \textbf{\textsc{Med-Stress}}, a targeted stress test…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-26 Boyu Xiao , Xiuqi Tian , Xuwen Song , Haochun Wang , Guanchun Song , Sendong Zhao , Bing Qin

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

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) 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) can shift their answers under pressure in ways that reflect accommodation rather than reasoning. Prior work on sycophancy has focused mainly on disagreement, flattery, and preference alignment, leaving a broader…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-10 Steven Au , Sujit Noronha

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

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

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

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

An LLM's factuality and refusal training can be compromised by simple changes to a prompt. Models often adopt user beliefs (sycophancy) or satisfy inappropriate requests which are wrapped within special text (jailbreaking). We explore…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-03 Alex Irpan , Alexander Matt Turner , Mark Kurzeja , David K. Elson , Rohin Shah

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

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

As LLMs are increasingly integrated into clinical workflows, their tendency for sycophancy, prioritizing user agreement over factual accuracy, poses significant risks to patient safety. While existing evaluations often rely on subjective…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Clément Christophe , Wadood Mohammed Abdul , Prateek Munjal , Tathagata Raha , Ronnie Rajan , Praveenkumar Kanithi

The increasing integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into decision-making frameworks has exposed significant vulnerabilities to social compliance, specifically sycophancy and conformity. However, a critical research gap exists…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Long Zhang , Wei-neng Chen

Large Language Models (LLMs) have been widely explored in educational scenarios. We identify a critical vulnerability in current educational LLMs, pedagogical jailbreaks, where students use answer-inducing prompts to elicit solutions rather…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-30 Sihang Zhao , Kangrui Yu , Youliang Yuan , Pinjia He , Hongyi Wen

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

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) can fluently generate student-like responses, making them attractive as simulated students for training and evaluating AI tutors and human educators. Yet such simulators are typically evaluated by output…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Heejin Do , Shashank Sonkar , Mrinmaya Sachan
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