Structured Output Collapses Answer Diversity Across 44 Language Models

Tapan Parikh

cs.CLJul 20, 2026

Structured Output Collapses Answer Diversity Across 44 Language Models

Authors: Tapan Parikh

Organizations: Cornell Tech

Abstract

When a language model must choose one answer from a large space of equally valid options, a format clause -- "Reply with JSON only" -- changes which answer it chooses. We re-run the One-Word Census (arXiv:2607.12796): 31 wide-answer-space category prompts asked of 44 models, now with the reply requested in JSON -- no schema enforcement, no constrained decoding, only the request. Convergence deepens sharply: on the unconstrained "Pick a word" prompt the modal answer rises from 41% to 64% of the pool and distinct answers fall from 52 to 36; mean answer-choice surprisal drops from 1.80 to 1.58 bits. The tax is progressive: six of 44 models move individually (BH-FDR q=.10), all toward the mode, led by the most distinctive models, while the conformist floor is immobile. It is a sharpener, not a re-indexer -- the plain-chat modal answer survives in 28 of 31 categories. Defaults are register-indexed: a within-run re-sample (n=20) finds JSON shifts 53% of a model's stable chat defaults, mostly back to the crowd, and installs defaults absent from chat (Claude Fable 5 answers "cerulean" for colour 0% of the time in chat, 100% in JSON). Full-battery controls reveal a register gradient: compression is significant and specific to the answer-delivery formats models are trained to speak (JSON -0.22 bits, p=.0002; XML -0.19, p=.002), absent for YAML and CSV, and reversed for an arbitrary bracket wrapper (+0.13, p=.009) -- weighing the mechanism toward tool-use post-training. Enforcing the schema at the decoder (response_format) compresses no further than the request (-0.03 bits): the collapse lives in the model's response to the register, not the decoder. Structured output is how software consumes language models, and that surface is served by a measurably more homogeneous model than the chat surface on which models are evaluated, compared, and chosen.

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\approx 5.3

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