# Probing Pre-Trained Language Models for Cross-Cultural Differences in Values

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.13722 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13722/

## Key facts

- Cited by 149 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Mar 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [RoBERTa: A Robustly Optimized BERT Pretraining Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.11692/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [Language Models as Knowledge Bases?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.01066/) (2019)
- [Cross-lingual Language Model Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07291/) (2019)
- [Teaching Machines to Read and Comprehend](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.03340/) (2015)
- [StereoSet: Measuring stereotypical bias in pretrained language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09456/) (2020)
- [Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.07187/) (2016)
- [A Primer in BERTology: What we know about how BERT works](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12327/) (2020)
- [Aligning AI With Shared Human Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02275/) (2020)
- [CrowS-Pairs: A Challenge Dataset for Measuring Social Biases in Masked Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.00133/) (2020)
- [On Measuring Social Biases in Sentence Encoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.10561/) (2019)
- [Closing the AI Accountability Gap: Defining an End-to-End Framework for Internal Algorithmic Auditing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.00973/) (2020)
- [Social Bias Frames: Reasoning about Social and Power Implications of Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.03891/) (2019)
- [Social Chemistry 101: Learning to Reason about Social and Moral Norms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00620/) (2020)
- [Word Embeddings Quantify 100 Years of Gender and Ethnic Stereotypes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08412/) (2017)
- [Challenges and Strategies in Cross-Cultural NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10020/) (2022)
- [Visually Grounded Reasoning across Languages and Cultures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13238/) (2021)
- [Word Alignment by Fine-tuning Embeddings on Parallel Corpora](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08231/) (2021)
- [Process for Adapting Language Models to Society (PALMS) with Values-Targeted Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10328/) (2021)
- [Detecting Emergent Intersectional Biases: Contextualized Word Embeddings Contain a Distribution of Human-like Biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03955/) (2020)
- [Do NLP Models Know Numbers? Probing Numeracy in Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.07940/) (2019)
- [Probing Pretrained Language Models for Lexical Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.05731/) (2020)
- [Intrinsic Bias Metrics Do Not Correlate with Application Bias](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15859/) (2020)
- [Moral Stories: Situated Reasoning about Norms, Intents, Actions, and their Consequences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15738/) (2020)
- [X-FACTR: Multilingual Factual Knowledge Retrieval from Pretrained Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06189/) (2020)
- [The Ghost in the Machine has an American accent: value conflict in GPT-3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07785/) (2022)
- [A Survey on Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14168/) (2021)
- [What's in the Box? A Preliminary Analysis of Undesirable Content in the Common Crawl Corpus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.02732/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 149)

- [Towards Measuring the Representation of Subjective Global Opinions in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16388/) (2023)
- [Assessing Cross-Cultural Alignment between ChatGPT and Human Societies: An Empirical Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17466/) (2023)
- [Monitoring AI-Modified Content at Scale: A Case Study on the Impact of ChatGPT on AI Conference Peer Reviews](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07183/) (2024)
- [Having Beer after Prayer? Measuring Cultural Bias in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14456/) (2023)
- [Cultural Bias and Cultural Alignment of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14096/) (2023)
- [Investigating Cultural Alignment of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13231/) (2024)
- [Cultural Alignment in Large Language Models: An Explanatory Analysis Based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12342/) (2023)
- [CultureBank: An Online Community-Driven Knowledge Base Towards Culturally Aware Language Technologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15238/) (2024)
- [NLPositionality: Characterizing Design Biases of Datasets and Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01943/) (2023)
- [Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11504/) (2023)
- [Moral Mimicry: Large Language Models Produce Moral Rationalizations Tailored to Political Identity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12106/) (2022)
- [The Multilingual Alignment Prism: Aligning Global and Local Preferences to Reduce Harm](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.18682/) (2024)
- [WorldValuesBench: A Large-Scale Benchmark Dataset for Multi-Cultural Value Awareness of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16308/) (2024)
- [AI Suggestions Homogenize Writing Toward Western Styles and Diminish Cultural Nuances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11360/) (2024)
- [DailyDilemmas: Revealing Value Preferences of LLMs with Quandaries of Daily Life](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02683/) (2024)
- [Are Large Language Models Consistent over Value-laden Questions?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02996/) (2024)
- [Beyond prompt brittleness: Evaluating the reliability and consistency of political worldviews in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17649/) (2024)
- [Multilingual Language Models are not Multicultural: A Case Study in Emotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01370/) (2023)
- [Specializing Large Language Models to Simulate Survey Response Distributions for Global Populations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07068/) (2025)
- [Knowledge of cultural moral norms in large language models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01857/) (2023)
- [Value FULCRA: Mapping Large Language Models to the Multidimensional Spectrum of Basic Human Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10766/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models as Superpositions of Cultural Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07870/) (2023)
- [From Instructions to Intrinsic Human Values -- A Survey of Alignment Goals for Big Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12014/) (2023)
- [Culture is Not Trivia: Sociocultural Theory for Cultural NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12057/) (2025)
- [Multilingual != Multicultural: Evaluating Gaps Between Multilingual Capabilities and Cultural Alignment in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16534/) (2025)
- [Operationalizing Contextual Integrity in Privacy-Conscious Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.02373/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Cultural Adaptability of a Large Language Model via Simulation of Synthetic Personas](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06929/) (2024)
- [An image speaks a thousand words, but can everyone listen? On image transcreation for cultural relevance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.01247/) (2024)
- [MBBQ: A Dataset for Cross-Lingual Comparison of Stereotypes in Generative LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07243/) (2024)
- [Speaking Multiple Languages Affects the Moral Bias of Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07733/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Language embeds information about social, cultural, and political values people hold. Prior work has explored social and potentially harmful biases encoded in Pre-Trained Language models (PTLMs). However, there has been no systematic study investigating how values embedded in these models vary across cultures. In this paper, we introduce probes to study which values across cultures are embedded in these models, and whether they align with existing theories and cross-cultural value surveys. We find that PTLMs capture differences in values across cultures, but those only weakly align with established value surveys. We discuss implications of using mis-aligned models in cross-cultural settings, as well as ways of aligning PTLMs with value surveys.