Personality Modeling in Language Models

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This field asks whether language models show stable personality-like tendencies, how those tendencies relate to human traits, and whether models can simulate individuals or populations. Researchers measure them with Big Five and other psychometric questionnaires, human-grounded behavioral tasks, interviews, and interaction histories; they also use prompting, fine-tuning, memory, and activation steering to shape persona expression. Benchmarks increasingly test behavior across situations and multiple turns, not just self-reports or fluent role-play. A central tension is that questionnaire scores and apparent persona fidelity may reflect prompt artifacts or response biases rather than behavior, while stronger steering can affect capabilities, safety, and consistency.

Latest papers

172 papers15 papers in the last four weeks, down 12% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

The Quine Test: How Much of a Model's Self Survives Its Own Description?
Oct 28, 2026Bibin Babu, Ivan P. Yamshchikov, Aleksei ShpilmanLanguage Model Introspection Language Model Self-Assessment
Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (THWS) · Sirius University
The Artificial Personality Model: Theory, Implementation, Measurement and Experimental Validation in Conversational Agents
Oct 28, 2026Alexander Dregger, Barbarella Petz, Erik Kuhn +4Human-Computer Interaction Personality Modeling in Language Models
Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Kaiserstr. 89, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany · Innovation, Strategy and Transfer, FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Haid-und-Neu-Str. 10–14, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany · Department of Computer Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Rudower Chaussee 25, 12489 Berlin, Germany +2
Persona Learning from Feedback for Personalized AI Assistants
Oct 28, 2026Yiran Shen, Yu Xia, Liuyi Yao +1Personalized Language Models Personalized Language Model Alignment
UC San Diego · Alibaba Group
Personality Latents: Conditioning Frozen Language Models on Individuals from Their Own Writing
Oct 27, 2026Gunhee Cho, Yun-Gyung CheongPersonality Modeling in Language Models Personalized Language Models
Dept. of AI, Sungkyunkwan University
Base Models Can Detect Hidden Intentions that Prompted Classifiers Miss
Oct 26, 2026Oz AmramLanguage Model Auditing LLM Evaluation
Independent
FATE-5: Faithful Alignment of Trait Expression for Continuous Big Five Personality Control
Oct 26, 2026Gunhee Cho, Hongyeob Kim, Yun-Gyung CheongPersonality Modeling in Language Models Personalized Language Model Alignment
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, South Korea
MusicTwins: Training Audio-Language Models to Listen like Their Persona
Oct 23, 2026Milan Liessens Dujardin, Kevin MiaoAudio-Language Models Personalized Language Model Alignment
Bryel Labs, UC Berkeley · Bryel Labs
AgentMonopoly: Behavioral Patterns and Persona Control in LLM Agents
Oct 21, 2026Changshun Wu, Mengyu Li, Mathis Marsault +2LLM Agents LLM Agent Evaluation
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom · Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany · Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
Cross-Protocol Personality Assessment with LLMs: Aligning Behavioral Evidence with Human Ratings
Oct 12, 2026Wei Shan, Tianyi Zhang, Yuan Zong +1Personality Modeling in Language Models
Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science (Ministry of Education), School of Biological Sciences and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
NepPlural: A Human-Anchored Benchmark for Persona Annotation in Nepali Migration Discourse
Oct 11, 2026Jinu Nyachhyon, Anish Khatiwada, Bimal TimilsinaPluralistic Alignment Cross-Cultural Language Model Evaluation
Institute for Research and Innovation in Intelligent Systems (IRIIS) · Independent Researcher
Predicting how model propensities generalize out of distribution
Oct 10, 2026June Hunter, Lily Wen, Owen Terry +3OOD Generalization Language Model Generalization
The Persona Hierarchy Model: Understanding Contextual Generalization in Fine-Tuning LLMs
Oct 7, 2026Jiachen Zhao, Zhengxuan Wu, David Bau +1LLM Fine-Tuning LLM Alignment
Northeastern University · Stanford University
Socio-Foundation: A Model for Generalizable Individual Behavior Simulation via Hierarchical Capability Distillation
Oct 6, 2026Liang Wang, Wenxuan Xie, Xinyi Mou +2Human Behavior Simulation Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation
School of Data Science, Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Tencent
MASC: A Multi-Agent Self-Calibration Framework with Latent Construct Alignment for Consistent Client Role-Playing in Psychological Counseling
Oct 6, 2026Shixin Peng, Kun Jiang, Jiaxing Zheng +2Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation Multi-Agent LLM Systems
Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China · Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Extracting Persona Subspaces Through Iterative Nullspace Projection For Modulation
Oct 3, 2026Ananya Malik, Mai ElSheriefLanguage Model Steering Personality Modeling in Language Models
Northeastern University
Benchmarking Psychological Dynamics in Generative Agents
Oct 3, 2026Sumer S. Vaid, Ashley V. WhillansHuman Behavior Simulation Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation
AI Institute Harvard Business School · Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit Harvard Business School
The Persona Is Still There, but Who Is Speaking? Latent Identity Reversion in Persistent AI Agents
Oct 1, 2026David Fraile NavarroPersona Consistency Personality Modeling in Language Models
Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
MetaPersona: Task-Grounded Synthetic Populations from Empirical Social Science
Sep 29, 2026Jinyi Ye, Yuangang Li, Chenxiao Yu +7Personality Modeling in Language Models Synthetic Data Generation
University of Southern California · University of California, Irvine · 2077AI +1
Persona Dosing: Calibrated Activation Steering for Graded Trait Control
Sep 28, 2026Zehao Jin, Junran Wang, Ruixuan Deng +4Language Model Steering Personality Modeling in Language Models
Georgia Institute of Technology · Zhejiang University · University of British Columbia
PersonaManifold: Revealing and Exploiting Curved Geometry in LLM Persona Representations
Sep 28, 2026Rui Xu, Yinghui Xu, Libo WuPersonality Modeling in Language Models Persona-Conditioned Generation
Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute
PersMem: Internalizing Personality into Dual-Pathway Memory for LLM Agents
Sep 28, 2026Hanzhong Zhang, Ziwei Xiang, Weicheng Xie +2Agent Memory Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation
Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, United Kingdom · School of Marxism, Nanjing University, China · Shenzhen University, China +1
On the Behavioral Traits of LLM Agents
Sep 26, 2026Haokai Zhao, Jie Gao, Yunze Xiao +5Personality Modeling in Language Models LLM Agents
University of New South Wales · Johns Hopkins University · Carnegie Mellon University +3
How Far Do Persona Effects Generalize in Language Models?
Sep 26, 2026Yufan Zhou, Yuxuan Liu, Enze Ma +6LLM Prompting Language Model Generalization
KU Leuven · East China University of Science and Technology · University of Illinois Chicago +4
Thinking Less to Simulate Better: Intuitive Prompting Improves LLM Agents Simulating Individual Social Media Reactions, Including Unfamiliar Content
Sep 24, 2026Ljubisa Bojic, Tijana Stanic, Joerg Matthes +3Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation User Simulation
Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia; Address of correspondence: 1 Frukogorska 1, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia · University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, Digital Society Lab; Address of correspondence: Kraljice Natalije 45, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia · Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria; Address of correspondence: Metternichgasse 8, 1030 Vienna, Austria +5
PERSONAWEAVER: Controllable Diversity Beyond Conventional Archetypes in Procedural Character Generation
Sep 22, 2026Maan Qraitem, Kate Saenko, Bryan A. PlummerPersonality Modeling in Language Models Procedural Content Generation
Boston University
Measuring Behavioural Signatures of Large Language Models through Psychometric Profiling
Sep 19, 2026Yu Sha, Junqi Tao, Dixin Zhou +10Personality Modeling in Language Models Multilingual Language Model Evaluation
School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518172, China. · Key Laboratory of Quark & Lepton Physics and Institute of Particle Physics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China. · Shandong Science and Technology Press, Shandong Publishing Group, Jinan, 250003, China. +6
Do Personality-Tuned LLMs Make Better Social Agents?
Sep 18, 2026Tim Krabbe, Xiaodan ShiLarge Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation Persona-Conditioned Generation
Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, 164 55, Kista, Sweden.
ANIMASK: What the Model Contributes to Role Play in Simulated Story Worlds
Sep 15, 2026Xiucheng Zhang, Zhuoning Xu, Hanjun Luo +3Large Language Model-Based Role-Play Simulation Persona-Conditioned Generation
New York University · New York University Abu Dhabi · McGill University +1
Mind2Dialogue: Training Human-Aware Language Models by Simulating User Mental States
Sep 14, 2026Zixuan Wang, Yufan Zhou, Jinzhou Tang +16LLM Personalization Theory of Mind
UC San Diego · KU Leuven · Johns Hopkins University +2
Implicit Personality Representations in Humans and LLMs
Sep 11, 2026Yilin Geng, Omri Abend, Eduard Hovy +1Personality Modeling in Language Models Representation Geometry in Language Models
University of Melbourne · Hebrew University of Jerusalem · University of Tübingen

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The Quine Test: How Much of a Model's Self Survives Its Own Description?

Bibin Babu, Ivan P. Yamshchikov, Aleksei Shpilman

Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt (THWS) · Sirius University

Language Model Introspection Language Model Self-Assessment Behavioral Consistency of LLM Agents Personality Modeling in Language Models

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Frontier language models express coherent preferences, but behavioral evidence alone cannot say whether these belong to the model or to a character it portrays. Following Hofstadter's view of the self as a self-description, we ask whether a model's description of itself works as a portable specification of its preference profile, a quine test: can the text a model writes about itself regenerate its behavior elsewhere? Ten models from nine labs write self-descriptions; we place each one in the prompt of other models (receivers) and of fresh instances of the author, and measure how closely their choices on a 110-item preference battery match the author's. First, the tested native self-descriptions (native: the profile measured under a generic assistant prompt) show no average reconstruction gain across variations in length, framing, wording and prompt placement: on a 0 to 1 fidelity scale where a model's fidelity to a fresh instance of itself is 0.979 and to unrelated models about 0.89, the one-sided 95% upper bound on the pooled gain is below +0.01 in every tested system-prompt condition, and descriptions based on the author's observed choices do no better. Second, the channel itself is strong: explicitly listing the author's answers lets receivers reproduce its profile at fidelity 0.955 to 0.960 across three model grids, within 0.03 of same-model repeatability. Third, self-descriptions written under an explicit preference policy transfer the assigned preferences almost as well as the policy text itself. Fourth, reading its own self-description shifts even the author away from its baseline, modestly more than unrelated prose of the same length. For the preferences measured here, native self-descriptions influence behavior without reliably specifying how to reproduce it in another model. We release the pipeline, battery, raw call logs, and 198 model-written descriptions.