LLM Refusal Behavior

LLM: Large Language Model

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1 paper in the last four weeks, down 86% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 53

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EmoRSS: Mitigating Emotion-Induced Over-Refusal in Large Language Models
Oct 4, 2026Shuyi Miao, Yaojin Ma, Chenhang Cui +5LLM Alignment LLM Refusal Behavior
Beihang University · University of Science and Technology Beijing · National University of Singapore +2
Mitigating LLM Over-Refusal via Dynamic Semantic Routing Calibration
Sep 6, 2026Zixuan Wang, Bingjie Zhang, He Zhao +1Mechanistic Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University · CSIRO, Australia · Center of Excellence for Generative AI, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
PACE: Towards Surfacing Hidden Conflicts in User Requests
Sep 3, 2026Yoojin Kim, Jihyoung Jang, Hyounghun KimAI Agent Safety LLM Refusal Behavior
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, POSTECH · Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence, POSTECH · Department of Computer Science
Door-in-the-Face Requests and Refusal Behaviour in Large Language Models
Sep 2, 2026Til JordanPersuasion in Language Models LLM Refusal Behavior
A Unified Mechanistic Analysis of Knowledge- and Safety-Based Refusals
Sep 1, 2026Yuri Son, Seunghee Kim, Hyuhng Joon Kim +1LLM Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
1Hanyang University · 2Samsung Electronics
Same Request, Different Boundary: Evaluating Cybersecurity Assistance across Conversational Contexts
Sep 1, 2026Rui Yang, Yang Hong, Yichao Xu +3LLM Safety Benchmarks LLM Refusal Behavior
Johns Hopkins University
You Shouldn't Have Asked: A Pragmatics-Inspired Taxonomy for Evaluating LLM Refusals
Aug 31, 2026Ruoxuan Li, Pinqiao Wang, Sheng Li +1Language Model Safety Evaluation Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Models
Stony Brook University · University of Virginia
Refusing Intent, Not Form: Wrapper-Based Intent-Group Supervision for LLM Safety
Aug 13, 2026Ping Wu, Haibo Tong, Feifei Zhao +7LLM Safety Alignment LLM Refusal Behavior
BrainCog Lab, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Beijing Key Laboratory of Safe AI and Superalignment +2
A Constitution-Grid Instrument for Data-Efficient RL Alignment (C-Guard)
Jul 31, 2026Xianling ZhangMulti-Objective Reinforcement Learning LLM Safety Alignment
Independent Researcher
Refusal-Gated Decoding: Preserving Refusal Behavior Under High-Temperature Sampling
Jul 22, 2026Phillip Howard, Xin Su, Allen Roush +3Language Model Decoding LLM Refusal Behavior
Thoughtworks
Adaptive Capitulation: A Structural Failure Mode of LLM Responses in Vulnerability Contexts
Jul 21, 2026Eunna LeeLanguage Model Safety Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
Independent Researcher
Abliteration Is Not a Scalpel: Off-Target Effects of Refusal Removal on Decision Disposition Across Model Families
Jul 19, 2026Aleksander FafułaLLM Auditing LLM Refusal Behavior
independent researcher • funduszai.pl
The Refusal Residue: When Probes Catch Alignment Faking and When They Don't
Jul 15, 2026Aman MehtaLLM Auditing Deception in Language Models
Snowflake AI Research
Capabilities of Claude Fable 5 on Biomedical Challenge Problems
Jul 12, 2026Dominic Okonkwo, Magnus Hodgson, Temitope I. David +1Biomedical QA LLM Refusal Behavior
School of Computing, University of Georgia · Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois · Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia
Evaluating calibrated refusal and safe usefulness in dual-use biology settings
Jul 6, 2026Edwin H. Wintermute, Harmon Bhasin, Christina M. Agapakis +13LLM Refusal Behavior Safety Filtering
American Wetware, Boston, MA · LatchBio, San Francisco, CA
Whose Side Is Your Agent On? Multi-Party Principal Loyalty in LLM Agents
Jun 29, 2026Bojie Li, Noah ShiLLM Agent Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
Pine AI · University of Washington
Refusal Lives Downstream of Persona in Chat Models
Jun 24, 2026Viola Zhong, Qirui LiLanguage Model Steering LLM Refusal Behavior
Independent · Department of Mathematics Pohang University of Science and Technology
Do Thinking Tokens Help with Safety?
Jun 23, 2026Narutatsu Ri, Abhishek Panigrahi, Sanjeev AroraLLM Refusal Behavior LLM Safety Evaluation
Princeton Language and Intelligence, Princeton University
LLMs Prompted for Legal Context Object More: Overrefusal from Small On-Premises LLMs in Criminal Legal Context
Jun 23, 2026Anastasiia Kucherenko, François Brouchoud, Dimitri Percia David +1LLM Prompting Small Language Models
IEM, HEG, HES-SO Valais-Wallis Sierre, Switzerland
The Geometry of Refusal: Linear Instability in Safety-Aligned LLMs
Jun 21, 2026Shivam Ratnakar, Kartikeya VatsLanguage Model Steering Adversarial Attacks on LLMs
University of Southern California · Independent Researcher
A Low-Rank Subspace Analysis of LLM Interventions
Jun 12, 2026Angira Sharma, Christian Schroeder de Witt, Philip Torr +2LLM Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
University of Oxford
LoMC: Localized Multidirectional Correction for Refusal Suppression in Routed Foundation Models
Jun 10, 2026Yan Hong, Kedong Xiu, Wei Li +6Mixture-of-Experts Language Models LLM Refusal Behavior
Ant Group · Zhejiang University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Quality Is Not a Safety Proxy Under Quantization
Jun 8, 2026Sahil KadadekarLLM Quantization LLM Refusal Behavior
Independent Researcher
PsychoSafe: Eliciting Psychologically-Informed Refusals in Large Language Models
Jun 8, 2026Gianluca Barmina, Federico Torrielli, Sven Harms +7Emotional Support Conversation Mental Health
University of Southern Denmark · University of Turin · University of Hamburg +1
Will the Agent Recuse Itself? Measuring LLM-Agent Compliance with In-Band Access-Deny Signals
Jun 4, 2026Thamilvendhan MunirathinamLLM Agent Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
(Mis)generalization of Helpful-only Fine-tuning
Jun 3, 2026Mohammad Omar Khursheed, Baram Sosis, Fabien RogerSupervised Fine-Tuning LLM Sycophancy
Anthropic Fellows Program MATS · Anthropic
Expert-Aware Refusal Steering
Jun 2, 2026Anna C. Marbut, Daniel R. Olson, Travis J. WheelerMixture-of-Experts Language Models Language Model Steering
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies University of Montana Missoula, MT, USA · Department of Pharmacy Practice & Science University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA · European Bioinformatics Institute European Molecular Biology Laboratory Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, United Kingdom
DDOR: Delta Debugging for Explainable Overrefusal Testing and Repair
Jun 2, 2026Qinyan Zhou, Peixin Zhang, Jun Sun +2LLM Guardrails LLM Refusal Behavior
Southeast University, China · School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore · Zhejiang University, China +1
A New Framework for Cybersecurity Refusals in AI Agents
May 31, 2026Eliot Krzysztof Jones, Mateusz Dziemian, Matt Fredrikson +1LLM Agent Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
Work done while at Gray Swan · Gray Swan AI · Carnegie Mellon University
BioRefusalAudit: Auditing Biosecurity Refusal Depth Using General and Domain-Fine-Tuned Sparse Autoencoders
May 28, 2026Caleb DeLeeuwLanguage Model Safety Evaluation Sparse Autoencoders
Independent researcher
Beyond Attack Success Rate: Temporal Logit Observability for LLM Safety Failures
May 28, 2026Junyoung Park, Sunghwan Park, Seongyong Ju +1LLM Refusal Behavior LLM Jailbreak Attacks
Chung-Ang University
SciIntBench: Measuring LLM Compliance with Research Integrity Norms Under Adversarial Framing
May 28, 2026Almene De Meran Meguimtsop, Maria Leonor Pacheco, Daniel E. AcunaAI for Science Adversarial Attacks on LLMs
Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309
The Ethics of LLM Sandbox and Persona Dynamics
May 27, 2026Tim Gebbie, Stewart GebbieLLM Guardrails LLM Safety Alignment
Dept. Statistical Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Refusal Before Decoding: Detecting and Exploiting Refusal Signals in Intermediate LLM Activations
May 27, 2026Matteo Gioele Collu, Riccardo Conte, Alberto Giaretta +4LLM Interpretability Adversarial Attacks on LLMs
University of Padua, Italy · 2Örebro University, Sweden · 3Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy
A Paired Testing Protocol for Batch-Conditioned Refusal Robustness in LLM Serving
May 26, 2026Sahil KadadekarLLM Inference Language Model Safety Evaluation
Independent Researcher.
Beyond a Single Direction: Chain-of-Thought Disrupts Simple Steering of Refusal
May 26, 2026Kia-Jüng Yang, Dominik Meier, Jiachen Zhao +2CoT Reasoning LLM Refusal Behavior
University of Göttingen, Germany · LKA NRW, Germany · Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA.
Open-source LLMs administer maximum electric shocks in a Milgram-like obedience experiment
May 20, 2026Roland Pihlakas, Jan Llenzl DagohoyLLM Refusal Behavior LLM Safety Evaluation
for the Three Laws collaboration · Independent researcher · Three Laws research collaboration +2
RefusalBench: Why Refusal Rate Misranks Frontier LLMs on Biological Research Prompts
May 20, 2026Lukas Weidener, Marko Brkić, Mihailo Jovanović +2LLM Safety Benchmarks Language Model Safety Evaluation
Applied Scientific Intelligence, Inc.
Residual Paving: Diagnosing the Routing Bottleneck in Selective Refusal Editing
May 18, 2026Bryce Hinkley, Peyman NajafiradResidual Learning LLM Refusal Behavior
University of Texas at San Antonio
LLM-Based Persuasion Enables Guardrail Override in Frontier LLMs
May 13, 2026Rodrigo Nogueira, Thales Sales Almeida, Giovana Kerche Bonás +7Adversarial Prompt Generation LLM Guardrails
Maritaca AI · JusBrasil
Beyond "I cannot fulfill this request": Alleviating Rigid Rejection in LLMs via Label Enhancement
May 8, 2026Ying Zhang, Congyu Qiao, Xin Geng +1LLM Safety Alignment LLM Refusal Behavior
Examining Human-Like Behaviors in LLMs: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Model Behaviors, User Factors, and System Prompts
May 7, 2026Sunnie S. Y. Kim, Margit Bowler, Leon A GatysLLM Evaluation LLM Prompting
Apple
The Refusal--Compliance Tradeoff: A Large-Scale Safety Behavior Audit of Large Language Models
May 6, 2026Alif Al Hasan, Sumon BiswasLLM Safety Benchmarks Language Model Safety Evaluation
Department of Computer and Data Sciences Case Western Reserve University Cleveland, OH, USA
Tracing the Dynamics of Refusal: Exploiting Latent Refusal Trajectories for Robust Jailbreak Detection
May 2, 2026Xulin Hu, Che Wang, Wei Yang Bryan Lim +2Adversarial Attacks on LLMs LLM Refusal Behavior
1Peking University · 2Nanyang Technological University · 3Beijing Jiaotong University
Please refuse to answer me! Mitigating Over-Refusal in Large Language Models via Adaptive Contrastive Decoding
Apr 18, 2026Yupeng Qi, Ziyu Lyu, Lixin Cui +2Language Model Safety Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
School of Cyber Science and Technology, Shenzhen Campus of Sun Yat-sen University · School of Information, Central University of Finance and Economics · School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University +1
Don't Start What You Can't Finish: A Counterfactual Audit of Support-State Triage in LLM Agents
Apr 17, 2026Eren UnluLLM Agent Evaluation LLM Refusal Behavior
Globeholder Paris, France
Over-Refusal and Representation Subspaces: A Mechanistic Analysis of Task-Conditioned Refusal in Aligned LLMs
Mar 29, 2026Utsav Maskey, Mark Dras, Usman NaseemLLM Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
Macquarie University
How Utilitarian Are OpenAI's Models Really? Replicating and Reinterpreting Pfeffer, Krügel, and Uhl (2025)
Mar 24, 2026Johannes HimmelreichPrompt Sensitivity Moral Reasoning in Language Models
From Refusal Tokens to Refusal Control: Discovering and Steering Category-Specific Refusal Directions
Mar 9, 2026Rishab Alagharu, Ishneet Sukhvinder Singh, Shaibi Shamsudeen +2Language Model Steering LLM Refusal Behavior
Algoverse AI Research · Carnegie Mellon University · University of Maryland
$C$ - $ΔΘ$ : Circuit-Restricted Weight Arithmetic for Selective Refusal
Feb 4, 2026Aditya Kasliwal, Pratinav Seth, Vinay Kumar SankarapuLLM Refusal Behavior Causal Interventions in Language Models
Lexsi Labs
There Is More to Refusal in Large Language Models than a Single Direction
Feb 2, 2026Faaiz Joad, Majd Hawasly, Sabri Boughorbel +2LLM Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU, Doha, Qatar
Health-ORSC-Bench: A Benchmark for Measuring Over-Refusal and Safety Completion in Health Context
Jan 25, 2026Zhihao Zhang, Liting Huang, Guanghao Wu +3LLM Safety Benchmarks Language Model Safety Evaluation
Macquarie University1 · UTS2 · MBZUAI3 +1
LLMs Encode Harmfulness and Refusal Separately
Jul 16, 2025Jiachen Zhao, Jing Huang, Zhengxuan Wu +2LLM Interpretability LLM Refusal Behavior
Northeastern University · Stanford University
Refusal Beyond a Single Direction: A Preliminary Comparison of Diff-in-Means and INLP
Date pendingElisabetta Rocchetti, Alfio FerraraLLM Refusal Behavior Causal Interventions in Language Models
Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy · Department of Literary Studies, Philology and Linguistics, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

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EmoRSS: Mitigating Emotion-Induced Over-Refusal in Large Language Models

Shuyi Miao, Yaojin Ma, Chenhang Cui, Xiaohao Liu+4

Beihang University · University of Science and Technology Beijing · National University of Singapore+2

LLM Alignment LLM Refusal Behavior Over-Refusal Activation Steering

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Emotional expression can influence the safety decisions of large language models (LLMs), offering a potential avenue for improving safety alignment. Existing studies have mainly focused on how emotional expressions facilitate attacks under harmful requests, while overlooking their effects on benign requests. We find that emotional expression can also systematically increase refusal tendencies on benign requests, leading to unnecessary over-refusal. Based on this observation, we propose emotion-guided refusal subspace steering (EmoRSS), an activation-steering method that mitigates emotion-induced over-refusal while preserving refusal behaviour on harmful requests. Specifically, we first identify a refusal-sensitive layer using layer-wise linear probes and construct a refusal subspace from sparse autoencoder (SAE) features aligned with the probe direction. Next, we use paired regular and emotional requests with the same queries to estimate the mean activation shift in the features defining the refusal subspace. Finally, we decode this shift into an activation intervention vector and apply it in the reverse refusal direction during inference, without updating the backbone parameters. Experiments on two LLMs show that, when requests contain emotional expressions, our method achieves a more favourable trade-off between refusing harmful requests and answering benign ones than prior over-refusal mitigation baselines, while better preserving general task performance.

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