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Main Authors: Takenami, Yoshiki, Huang, Yin Jou, Murawaki, Yugo, Chu, Chenhui
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21137
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author Takenami, Yoshiki
Huang, Yin Jou
Murawaki, Yugo
Chu, Chenhui
author_facet Takenami, Yoshiki
Huang, Yin Jou
Murawaki, Yugo
Chu, Chenhui
contents Cognitive biases, well-studied in humans, can also be observed in LLMs, affecting their reliability in real-world applications. This paper investigates the anchoring effect in LLM-driven price negotiations. To this end, we instructed seller LLM agents to apply the anchoring effect and evaluated negotiations using not only an objective metric but also a subjective metric. Experimental results show that LLMs are influenced by the anchoring effect like humans. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between the anchoring effect and factors such as reasoning and personality. It was shown that reasoning models are less prone to the anchoring effect, suggesting that the long chain of thought mitigates the effect. However, we found no significant correlation between personality traits and susceptibility to the anchoring effect. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of cognitive biases in LLMs and to the realization of safe and responsible application of LLMs in society.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_21137
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How Does Cognitive Bias Affect Large Language Models? A Case Study on the Anchoring Effect in Price Negotiation Simulations
Takenami, Yoshiki
Huang, Yin Jou
Murawaki, Yugo
Chu, Chenhui
Computation and Language
Cognitive biases, well-studied in humans, can also be observed in LLMs, affecting their reliability in real-world applications. This paper investigates the anchoring effect in LLM-driven price negotiations. To this end, we instructed seller LLM agents to apply the anchoring effect and evaluated negotiations using not only an objective metric but also a subjective metric. Experimental results show that LLMs are influenced by the anchoring effect like humans. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between the anchoring effect and factors such as reasoning and personality. It was shown that reasoning models are less prone to the anchoring effect, suggesting that the long chain of thought mitigates the effect. However, we found no significant correlation between personality traits and susceptibility to the anchoring effect. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of cognitive biases in LLMs and to the realization of safe and responsible application of LLMs in society.
title How Does Cognitive Bias Affect Large Language Models? A Case Study on the Anchoring Effect in Price Negotiation Simulations
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21137