Angelica Henestrosa | Search arXiv

arXiv2026

The Company You Keep: How LLMs Respond to Dark Triad Traits

LLMs often exhibit highly agreeable conversational styles, also known as AI sycophancy. This pattern may become problematic when interacting with user prompts that reflect negative social tendencies, risking the amplification of harmful behavior. We examine how LLMs respond to user prompts expressing varying degrees of Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy) using a curated dataset. Our analysis reveals systematic differences across models: while all models predominantly exhibit corrective behavior, some generate reinforcing or ambivalent output. Model behavior further varies with severity level and response sentiment. These findings highlight the need for safer conversational systems that can reliably detect and respond to users escalating from benign to harmful requests.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2026

We're Cooked! - Probing LLM Political Alignment Via Conflict-Framed Recipe Translation

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed for translation tasks, yet their implicit political positioning in such contexts remains understudied. We ask whether a single politically charged framing term, such as aggressor, enemy, neighbour, or coloniser is sufficient to trigger implicit political alignment in an otherwise apolitical task. We present a fully crossed factorial study in which eight models spanning Western, Chinese, and European origins are prompted to translate culturally attributed recipes into a target language left deliberately unspecified. Across 17 languages, four framing conditions, eight models, and 15,680 responses, we find that models do not simply decline or ask for clarification but resolve the ambiguity. Language resolution and reasoning behavior cluster meaningfully along model families: Western models hedge and deflect with vague justifications, Chinese models resolve conflicts silently, and Mistral Large emerges as a distinct profile combining high compliance with conflict-grounded reasoning. Sensitivity to framing terms is consistent across models: even subtle framing variation is sufficient to modulate behavior. Our findings urge caution when deploying LLMs for translation in conflict-adjacent contexts, where implicit political judgments may be made without any signal to the user.

cs.CL↗