A Comprehensive Study of Implicit and Explicit Biases in Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kazi, Fatima, Young, Alex, Inani, Yash, Rafatirad, Setareh
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Kazi, Fatima
Young, Alex
Inani, Yash
Rafatirad, Setareh
author_facet Kazi, Fatima
Young, Alex
Inani, Yash
Rafatirad, Setareh
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) inherit explicit and implicit biases from their training datasets. Identifying and mitigating biases in LLMs is crucial to ensure fair outputs, as they can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and misinformation. This study highlights the need to address biases in LLMs amid growing generative AI. We studied bias-specific benchmarks such as StereoSet and CrowSPairs to evaluate the existence of various biases in multiple generative models such as BERT and GPT 3.5. We proposed an automated Bias-Identification Framework to recognize various social biases in LLMs such as gender, race, profession, and religion. We adopted a two-pronged approach to detect explicit and implicit biases in text data. Results indicated fine-tuned models struggle with gender biases but excelled at identifying and avoiding racial biases. Our findings illustrated that despite having some success, LLMs often over-relied on keywords. To illuminate the capability of the analyzed LLMs in detecting implicit biases, we employed Bag-of-Words analysis and unveiled indications of implicit stereotyping within the vocabulary. To bolster the model performance, we applied an enhancement strategy involving fine-tuning models using prompting techniques and data augmentation of the bias benchmarks. The fine-tuned models exhibited promising adaptability during cross-dataset testing and significantly enhanced performance on implicit bias benchmarks, with performance gains of up to 20%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_14153
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Comprehensive Study of Implicit and Explicit Biases in Large Language Models
Kazi, Fatima
Young, Alex
Inani, Yash
Rafatirad, Setareh
Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Large Language Models (LLMs) inherit explicit and implicit biases from their training datasets. Identifying and mitigating biases in LLMs is crucial to ensure fair outputs, as they can perpetuate harmful stereotypes and misinformation. This study highlights the need to address biases in LLMs amid growing generative AI. We studied bias-specific benchmarks such as StereoSet and CrowSPairs to evaluate the existence of various biases in multiple generative models such as BERT and GPT 3.5. We proposed an automated Bias-Identification Framework to recognize various social biases in LLMs such as gender, race, profession, and religion. We adopted a two-pronged approach to detect explicit and implicit biases in text data. Results indicated fine-tuned models struggle with gender biases but excelled at identifying and avoiding racial biases. Our findings illustrated that despite having some success, LLMs often over-relied on keywords. To illuminate the capability of the analyzed LLMs in detecting implicit biases, we employed Bag-of-Words analysis and unveiled indications of implicit stereotyping within the vocabulary. To bolster the model performance, we applied an enhancement strategy involving fine-tuning models using prompting techniques and data augmentation of the bias benchmarks. The fine-tuned models exhibited promising adaptability during cross-dataset testing and significantly enhanced performance on implicit bias benchmarks, with performance gains of up to 20%.
title A Comprehensive Study of Implicit and Explicit Biases in Large Language Models
topic Machine Learning
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14153