Superficial Beliefs in LLM Decision-Making

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

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Original abstract

We ask whether large language models (LLMs) merely imitate rationales when choosing between two options, or whether their choices reflect a systematic underlying decision structure. Using synthetic binary decision settings in which models choose between profiles defined by graded attributes, we compare the attribute a model says mattered most with the attribute that best explains its choice under a behavioural model fit to prior decisions. The behavioural model predicts held-out choices well, showing that model behaviour is systematically related to the visible attributes rather than being random. However, direct self-reports and a separate score-based judge recover the behaviourally inferred driver only partially. The resulting picture is neither one of arbitrary behaviour nor one of fully articulated belief - outputs are structured enough to support prediction, but explicit reasons track the recovered driver only imperfectly. This qualitative pattern persists across prompt-order and sampling perturbations, alternative behavioural models, targeted occlusion analyses, and structurally varied decision settings. We interpret this as evidence for ``superficial belief'' in LLM decision-making: models behave as if guided by probabilistic local priorities over attributes, while having only limited verbal access to the attributes that drive their decisions.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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