SODE: Analyzing Social Dynamics in LLM Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Jung, Inseo, Oh, Yoonseok, Back, Kyungryul, Kim, Jinkyu, Lee, Jungbeom
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Jung, Inseo
Oh, Yoonseok
Back, Kyungryul
Kim, Jinkyu
Lee, Jungbeom
author_facet Jung, Inseo
Oh, Yoonseok
Back, Kyungryul
Kim, Jinkyu
Lee, Jungbeom
contents As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve into interactive agents, understanding their behavioral alignment within human social dynamics becomes essential. While behavioral game theory offers a framework to study these interactions, previous work has predominantly relied on outcome-based metrics such as average scores. This focus overlooks the mechanisms that facilitate sustainable cooperation, as identical scores can be derived from vastly different strategies. To bridge this gap, we introduce SODE (Social Dynamics Evaluation), a framework that evaluates LLM agents across three evolutionary dimensions: Direct Reciprocity for strategy adaptation, Indirect Reciprocity for reputation sensitivity, and Group Dynamics for cooperative resilience. Applying SODE reveals systematic divergences: instruction-tuned models often exhibit "passive compliance" that renders them vulnerable to exploitation, while reasoning models prioritize short-horizon optimization, destabilizing long-term cooperation. Notably, we demonstrate that a "long-horizon framing" can unlock reciprocal capabilities in reasoning models. Thus, SODE offers a systematic, mechanism-grounded benchmark for aligning AI agents with complex human social dynamics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_23949
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SODE: Analyzing Social Dynamics in LLM Agents
Jung, Inseo
Oh, Yoonseok
Back, Kyungryul
Kim, Jinkyu
Lee, Jungbeom
Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
As Large Language Models (LLMs) evolve into interactive agents, understanding their behavioral alignment within human social dynamics becomes essential. While behavioral game theory offers a framework to study these interactions, previous work has predominantly relied on outcome-based metrics such as average scores. This focus overlooks the mechanisms that facilitate sustainable cooperation, as identical scores can be derived from vastly different strategies. To bridge this gap, we introduce SODE (Social Dynamics Evaluation), a framework that evaluates LLM agents across three evolutionary dimensions: Direct Reciprocity for strategy adaptation, Indirect Reciprocity for reputation sensitivity, and Group Dynamics for cooperative resilience. Applying SODE reveals systematic divergences: instruction-tuned models often exhibit "passive compliance" that renders them vulnerable to exploitation, while reasoning models prioritize short-horizon optimization, destabilizing long-term cooperation. Notably, we demonstrate that a "long-horizon framing" can unlock reciprocal capabilities in reasoning models. Thus, SODE offers a systematic, mechanism-grounded benchmark for aligning AI agents with complex human social dynamics.
title SODE: Analyzing Social Dynamics in LLM Agents
topic Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23949