StressPrompt: Does Stress Impact Large Language Models and Human Performance Similarly?

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Shen, Guobin, Zhao, Dongcheng, Bao, Aorigele, He, Xiang, Dong, Yiting, Zeng, Yi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Shen, Guobin
Zhao, Dongcheng
Bao, Aorigele
He, Xiang
Dong, Yiting
Zeng, Yi
author_facet Shen, Guobin
Zhao, Dongcheng
Bao, Aorigele
He, Xiang
Dong, Yiting
Zeng, Yi
contents Human beings often experience stress, which can significantly influence their performance. This study explores whether Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit stress responses similar to those of humans and whether their performance fluctuates under different stress-inducing prompts. To investigate this, we developed a novel set of prompts, termed StressPrompt, designed to induce varying levels of stress. These prompts were derived from established psychological frameworks and carefully calibrated based on ratings from human participants. We then applied these prompts to several LLMs to assess their responses across a range of tasks, including instruction-following, complex reasoning, and emotional intelligence. The findings suggest that LLMs, like humans, perform optimally under moderate stress, consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson law. Notably, their performance declines under both low and high-stress conditions. Our analysis further revealed that these StressPrompts significantly alter the internal states of LLMs, leading to changes in their neural representations that mirror human responses to stress. This research provides critical insights into the operational robustness and flexibility of LLMs, demonstrating the importance of designing AI systems capable of maintaining high performance in real-world scenarios where stress is prevalent, such as in customer service, healthcare, and emergency response contexts. Moreover, this study contributes to the broader AI research community by offering a new perspective on how LLMs handle different scenarios and their similarities to human cognition.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_17167
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle StressPrompt: Does Stress Impact Large Language Models and Human Performance Similarly?
Shen, Guobin
Zhao, Dongcheng
Bao, Aorigele
He, Xiang
Dong, Yiting
Zeng, Yi
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Human beings often experience stress, which can significantly influence their performance. This study explores whether Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit stress responses similar to those of humans and whether their performance fluctuates under different stress-inducing prompts. To investigate this, we developed a novel set of prompts, termed StressPrompt, designed to induce varying levels of stress. These prompts were derived from established psychological frameworks and carefully calibrated based on ratings from human participants. We then applied these prompts to several LLMs to assess their responses across a range of tasks, including instruction-following, complex reasoning, and emotional intelligence. The findings suggest that LLMs, like humans, perform optimally under moderate stress, consistent with the Yerkes-Dodson law. Notably, their performance declines under both low and high-stress conditions. Our analysis further revealed that these StressPrompts significantly alter the internal states of LLMs, leading to changes in their neural representations that mirror human responses to stress. This research provides critical insights into the operational robustness and flexibility of LLMs, demonstrating the importance of designing AI systems capable of maintaining high performance in real-world scenarios where stress is prevalent, such as in customer service, healthcare, and emergency response contexts. Moreover, this study contributes to the broader AI research community by offering a new perspective on how LLMs handle different scenarios and their similarities to human cognition.
title StressPrompt: Does Stress Impact Large Language Models and Human Performance Similarly?
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.17167