ValueFlow: Measuring the Propagation of Value Perturbations in Multi-Agent LLM Systems
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866914610857115648 |
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| author | Liu, Jinnuo Liu, Chuke Shen, Hua |
| author_facet | Liu, Jinnuo Liu, Chuke Shen, Hua |
| contents | Multi-agent large language model (LLM) systems increasingly consist of agents that observe and respond to one another's outputs. While value alignment is typically evaluated for isolated models, how value perturbations propagate through agent interactions remains poorly understood. We present ValueFlow, a perturbation-based framework that measures value drift in multi-agent systems via a 56-value valuation dataset derived from the Schwartz Value Survey, with agent value orientations scored using an LLM-as-a-judge protocol. ValueFlow decomposes value drift into agent-level response behavior and system-level structural effects, captured by two metrics: \b{eta}-susceptibility, an agent's sensitivity to perturbed peer value signals, and system susceptibility (SS), the effect of node-level perturbations on final system outputs.Experiments span across value dimensions, backbones, personas, and topologies, showing that susceptibility varies sharply across values and is strongly shaped by interaction structure, indicating that value alignment in multi-agent systems is a system-level property, not just an agent-level one. ValueFlow thus provides a principled basis for auditing and mitigating value propagation in deployed multi-agent systems. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_08567 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | ValueFlow: Measuring the Propagation of Value Perturbations in Multi-Agent LLM Systems Liu, Jinnuo Liu, Chuke Shen, Hua Multiagent Systems Computation and Language Multi-agent large language model (LLM) systems increasingly consist of agents that observe and respond to one another's outputs. While value alignment is typically evaluated for isolated models, how value perturbations propagate through agent interactions remains poorly understood. We present ValueFlow, a perturbation-based framework that measures value drift in multi-agent systems via a 56-value valuation dataset derived from the Schwartz Value Survey, with agent value orientations scored using an LLM-as-a-judge protocol. ValueFlow decomposes value drift into agent-level response behavior and system-level structural effects, captured by two metrics: \b{eta}-susceptibility, an agent's sensitivity to perturbed peer value signals, and system susceptibility (SS), the effect of node-level perturbations on final system outputs.Experiments span across value dimensions, backbones, personas, and topologies, showing that susceptibility varies sharply across values and is strongly shaped by interaction structure, indicating that value alignment in multi-agent systems is a system-level property, not just an agent-level one. ValueFlow thus provides a principled basis for auditing and mitigating value propagation in deployed multi-agent systems. |
| title | ValueFlow: Measuring the Propagation of Value Perturbations in Multi-Agent LLM Systems |
| topic | Multiagent Systems Computation and Language |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08567 |