Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Chu, Xu, Wang, Guanyu, Tan, Zhijie, Chen, Xinrong, Li, Ziyu, Mo, Tong, Li, Weiping
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Chu, Xu
Wang, Guanyu
Tan, Zhijie
Chen, Xinrong
Li, Ziyu
Mo, Tong
Li, Weiping
author_facet Chu, Xu
Wang, Guanyu
Tan, Zhijie
Chen, Xinrong
Li, Ziyu
Mo, Tong
Li, Weiping
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from order bias, where their performance is affected by the arrangement order of input elements. This unfairness limits the model's applications in scenarios such as in-context learning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Recent studies attempt to obtain optimal or suboptimal arrangements based on statistical results or using dataset-based search, but these methods increase inference overhead while leaving the model's inherent order bias unresolved. Other studies mitigate order sensitivity through supervised fine-tuning using augmented training sets with multiple order variants, but often at the cost of accuracy, trapping the model in consistent yet incorrect hallucinations. In this paper, we propose \textbf{D}ual \textbf{G}roup \textbf{A}dvantage \textbf{O}ptimization (\textbf{DGAO}), which aims to improve model accuracy and order stability simultaneously. DGAO calculates and balances intra-group relative accuracy advantage and inter-group relative stability advantage, rewarding the policy model for generating order-stable and correct outputs while penalizing order-sensitive or incorrect responses. This marks the first time reinforcement learning has been used to mitigate LLMs' order sensitivity. We also propose two new metrics, Consistency Rate and Overconfidence Rate, to reveal the pseudo-stability of previous methods and guide more comprehensive evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DGAO achieves superior order fairness while improving performance on RAG, mathematical reasoning, and classification tasks. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Hyalinesky/DGAO.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_11974
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization
Chu, Xu
Wang, Guanyu
Tan, Zhijie
Chen, Xinrong
Li, Ziyu
Mo, Tong
Li, Weiping
Machine Learning
Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from order bias, where their performance is affected by the arrangement order of input elements. This unfairness limits the model's applications in scenarios such as in-context learning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Recent studies attempt to obtain optimal or suboptimal arrangements based on statistical results or using dataset-based search, but these methods increase inference overhead while leaving the model's inherent order bias unresolved. Other studies mitigate order sensitivity through supervised fine-tuning using augmented training sets with multiple order variants, but often at the cost of accuracy, trapping the model in consistent yet incorrect hallucinations. In this paper, we propose \textbf{D}ual \textbf{G}roup \textbf{A}dvantage \textbf{O}ptimization (\textbf{DGAO}), which aims to improve model accuracy and order stability simultaneously. DGAO calculates and balances intra-group relative accuracy advantage and inter-group relative stability advantage, rewarding the policy model for generating order-stable and correct outputs while penalizing order-sensitive or incorrect responses. This marks the first time reinforcement learning has been used to mitigate LLMs' order sensitivity. We also propose two new metrics, Consistency Rate and Overconfidence Rate, to reveal the pseudo-stability of previous methods and guide more comprehensive evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DGAO achieves superior order fairness while improving performance on RAG, mathematical reasoning, and classification tasks. Our code is available at: https://github.com/Hyalinesky/DGAO.
title Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.11974