Mind the (Belief) Gap: Group Identity in the World of LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Borah, Angana, Houalla, Marwa, Mihalcea, Rada
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Borah, Angana
Houalla, Marwa
Mihalcea, Rada
author_facet Borah, Angana
Houalla, Marwa
Mihalcea, Rada
contents Social biases and belief-driven behaviors can significantly impact Large Language Models (LLMs) decisions on several tasks. As LLMs are increasingly used in multi-agent systems for societal simulations, their ability to model fundamental group psychological characteristics remains critical yet under-explored. In this study, we present a multi-agent framework that simulates belief congruence, a classical group psychology theory that plays a crucial role in shaping societal interactions and preferences. Our findings reveal that LLMs exhibit amplified belief congruence compared to humans, across diverse contexts. We further investigate the implications of this behavior on two downstream tasks: (1) misinformation dissemination and (2) LLM learning, finding that belief congruence in LLMs increases misinformation dissemination and impedes learning. To mitigate these negative impacts, we propose strategies inspired by: (1) contact hypothesis, (2) accuracy nudges, and (3) global citizenship framework. Our results show that the best strategies reduce misinformation dissemination by up to 37% and enhance learning by 11%. Bridging social psychology and AI, our work provides insights to navigate real-world interactions using LLMs while addressing belief-driven biases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_02016
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mind the (Belief) Gap: Group Identity in the World of LLMs
Borah, Angana
Houalla, Marwa
Mihalcea, Rada
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Social biases and belief-driven behaviors can significantly impact Large Language Models (LLMs) decisions on several tasks. As LLMs are increasingly used in multi-agent systems for societal simulations, their ability to model fundamental group psychological characteristics remains critical yet under-explored. In this study, we present a multi-agent framework that simulates belief congruence, a classical group psychology theory that plays a crucial role in shaping societal interactions and preferences. Our findings reveal that LLMs exhibit amplified belief congruence compared to humans, across diverse contexts. We further investigate the implications of this behavior on two downstream tasks: (1) misinformation dissemination and (2) LLM learning, finding that belief congruence in LLMs increases misinformation dissemination and impedes learning. To mitigate these negative impacts, we propose strategies inspired by: (1) contact hypothesis, (2) accuracy nudges, and (3) global citizenship framework. Our results show that the best strategies reduce misinformation dissemination by up to 37% and enhance learning by 11%. Bridging social psychology and AI, our work provides insights to navigate real-world interactions using LLMs while addressing belief-driven biases.
title Mind the (Belief) Gap: Group Identity in the World of LLMs
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.02016