The Prompt Makes the Person(a): A Systematic Evaluation of Sociodemographic Persona Prompting for Large Language Models
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866918153523560448 |
|---|---|
| author | Lutz, Marlene Sen, Indira Ahnert, Georg Rogers, Elisa Strohmaier, Markus |
| author_facet | Lutz, Marlene Sen, Indira Ahnert, Georg Rogers, Elisa Strohmaier, Markus |
| contents | Persona prompting is increasingly used in large language models (LLMs) to simulate views of various sociodemographic groups. However, how a persona prompt is formulated can significantly affect outcomes, raising concerns about the fidelity of such simulations. Using five open-source LLMs, we systematically examine how different persona prompt strategies, specifically role adoption formats and demographic priming strategies, influence LLM simulations across 15 intersectional demographic groups in both open- and closed-ended tasks. Our findings show that LLMs struggle to simulate marginalized groups but that the choice of demographic priming and role adoption strategy significantly impacts their portrayal. Specifically, we find that prompting in an interview-style format and name-based priming can help reduce stereotyping and improve alignment. Surprisingly, smaller models like OLMo-2-7B outperform larger ones such as Llama-3.3-70B. Our findings offer actionable guidance for designing sociodemographic persona prompts in LLM-based simulation studies. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16076 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The Prompt Makes the Person(a): A Systematic Evaluation of Sociodemographic Persona Prompting for Large Language Models Lutz, Marlene Sen, Indira Ahnert, Georg Rogers, Elisa Strohmaier, Markus Computation and Language Persona prompting is increasingly used in large language models (LLMs) to simulate views of various sociodemographic groups. However, how a persona prompt is formulated can significantly affect outcomes, raising concerns about the fidelity of such simulations. Using five open-source LLMs, we systematically examine how different persona prompt strategies, specifically role adoption formats and demographic priming strategies, influence LLM simulations across 15 intersectional demographic groups in both open- and closed-ended tasks. Our findings show that LLMs struggle to simulate marginalized groups but that the choice of demographic priming and role adoption strategy significantly impacts their portrayal. Specifically, we find that prompting in an interview-style format and name-based priming can help reduce stereotyping and improve alignment. Surprisingly, smaller models like OLMo-2-7B outperform larger ones such as Llama-3.3-70B. Our findings offer actionable guidance for designing sociodemographic persona prompts in LLM-based simulation studies. |
| title | The Prompt Makes the Person(a): A Systematic Evaluation of Sociodemographic Persona Prompting for Large Language Models |
| topic | Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16076 |