Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Harry, Tamunotonye, Ngong, Ivoline, Nweke, Chima, Feng, Yuanyuan, Near, Joseph
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15395
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866915985501454336
author Harry, Tamunotonye
Ngong, Ivoline
Nweke, Chima
Feng, Yuanyuan
Near, Joseph
author_facet Harry, Tamunotonye
Ngong, Ivoline
Nweke, Chima
Feng, Yuanyuan
Near, Joseph
contents User interactions with language models vary due to static properties of the user (trait) and the specific context of the interaction (state). However, existing persona datasets (like PersonaChat, PANDORA etc.) capture only trait, and ignore the impact of state. We introduce Chameleon, a dataset of 5,001 contextual psychological profiles from 1,667 Reddit users, each measured across multiple contexts. Using the Chameleon dataset, we present three key findings. First, inspired by Latent State-Trait theory, we decompose variance and find that 74% is within-person(state) while only 26% is between-person (trait). Second, we find that LLMs are state-blind: they focus on trait only, and produce similar responses regardless of state. Third, we find that reward models react to user state, but inconsistently: different models favor or penalize the same users in opposite directions. We release Chameleon to support research on affective computing, personalized dialogue, and RLHF alignment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15395
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Fixed Psychological Personas: State Beats Trait, but Language Models are State-Blind
Harry, Tamunotonye
Ngong, Ivoline
Nweke, Chima
Feng, Yuanyuan
Near, Joseph
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
User interactions with language models vary due to static properties of the user (trait) and the specific context of the interaction (state). However, existing persona datasets (like PersonaChat, PANDORA etc.) capture only trait, and ignore the impact of state. We introduce Chameleon, a dataset of 5,001 contextual psychological profiles from 1,667 Reddit users, each measured across multiple contexts. Using the Chameleon dataset, we present three key findings. First, inspired by Latent State-Trait theory, we decompose variance and find that 74% is within-person(state) while only 26% is between-person (trait). Second, we find that LLMs are state-blind: they focus on trait only, and produce similar responses regardless of state. Third, we find that reward models react to user state, but inconsistently: different models favor or penalize the same users in opposite directions. We release Chameleon to support research on affective computing, personalized dialogue, and RLHF alignment.
title Beyond Fixed Psychological Personas: State Beats Trait, but Language Models are State-Blind
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15395