mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Identifying and Manipulating the Personality Traits of Language Models

arXiv 2212.10276 ↗First posted 20 Dec 2022cs.AIcited by 40

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Psychology research has long explored aspects of human personality such as extroversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. Categorizations like the `Big Five' personality traits are commonly used to assess and diagnose personality types. In this work, we explore the question of whether the perceived personality in language models is exhibited consistently in their language generation. For example, is a language model such as GPT2 likely to respond in a consistent way if asked to go out to a party? We also investigate whether such personality traits can be controlled. We show that when provided different types of contexts (such as personality descriptions, or answers to diagnostic questions about personality traits), language models such as BERT and GPT2 can consistently identify and reflect personality markers in those contexts. This behavior illustrates an ability to be manipulated in a highly predictable way, and frames them as tools for identifying personality traits and controlling personas in applications such as dialog systems. We also contribute a crowd-sourced data-set of personality descriptions of human subjects paired with their `Big Five' personality assessment data, and a data-set of personality descriptions collated from Reddit.

Key facts. Cited by 40 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 7 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2022.

Builds on

7 of 39 references.

References · 7

  1. 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,204
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  3. 2022Using DeepSpeed and Megatron to Train Megatron-Turing NLG 530B, A Large-Scale Generative Language Modelcited by 557
  4. 2019Identifying and Reducing Gender Bias in Word-Level Language Modelscited by 214
  5. 2019Reducing Sentiment Bias in Language Models via Counterfactual Evaluationcited by 148
  6. 2021What Context Features Can Transformer Language Models Use?cited by 49
  7. 2017A Data-Driven Analysis of Workers' Earnings on Amazon Mechanical Turkcited by 38

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 12; 2024: 19; 2025: 4; 2026: 5.

40 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,422
  2. 2023PersonaLLM: Investigating the Ability of Large Language Models to Express Personality Traitscited by 229
  3. 2024From Persona to Personalization: A Survey on Role-Playing Language Agentscited by 206
  4. 2023Personality Traits in Large Language Modelscited by 166
  5. 2023Generative Language Models Exhibit Social Identity Biasescited by 107
  6. 2023Language Model Behavior: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 92
  7. 2025LLM Generated Persona is a Promise with a Catchcited by 77
  8. 2023Can ChatGPT Assess Human Personalities? A General Evaluation Frameworkcited by 69
  9. 2024Do LLMs Have Distinct and Consistent Personality? TRAIT: Personality Testset designed for LLMs with Psychometricscited by 56
  10. 2024Random Silicon Sampling: Simulating Human Sub-Population Opinion Using a Large Language Model Based on Group-Level Demographic Informationcited by 48
  11. 2023Self-Assessment Tests are Unreliable Measures of LLM Personalitycited by 39
  12. 2024LLM Agents in Interaction: Measuring Personality Consistency and Linguistic Alignment in Interacting Populations of Large Language Modelscited by 33
28 more
  1. 2023Have Large Language Models Developed a Personality?: Applicability of Self-Assessment Tests in Measuring Personality in LLMscited by 32
  2. 2024How Far Are We From AGI: Are LLMs All We Need?cited by 31
  3. 2024Open Models, Closed Minds? On Agents Capabilities in Mimicking Human Personalities through Open Large Language Modelscited by 19
  4. 2024ValueBench: Towards Comprehensively Evaluating Value Orientations and Understanding of Large Language Modelscited by 19
  5. 2024LMLPA: Language Model Linguistic Personality Assessmentcited by 15
  6. 2023From Values to Opinions: Predicting Human Behaviors and Stances Using Value-Injected Large Language Modelscited by 10
  7. 2024Identifying Multiple Personalities in Large Language Models with External Evaluationcited by 10
  8. 2024Self-assessment, Exhibition, and Recognition: a Review of Personality in Large Language Modelscited by 10
  9. 2025Humanizing LLMs: A Survey of Psychological Measurements with Tools, Datasets, and Human-Agent Applicationscited by 10
  10. 2024Effective Generative AI: The Human-Algorithm Centaurcited by 8
  11. 2023UPLex: Fine-Grained Personality Control in Large Language Models via Unsupervised Lexical Modulationcited by 7
  12. 2024AFSPP: Agent Framework for Shaping Preference and Personality with Large Language Modelscited by 7
  13. 2024Assessment and manipulation of latent constructs in pre-trained language models using psychometric scalescited by 7
  14. 2024CogGPT: Unleashing the Power of Cognitive Dynamics on Large Language Modelscited by 6
  15. 2023RealBehavior: A Framework for Faithfully Characterizing Foundation Models' Human-like Behavior Mechanismscited by 5
  16. 2024PsychAdapter: Adapting LLM Transformers to Reflect Traits, Personality and Mental Healthcited by 5
  17. 2024Dynamic Generation of Personalities with Large Language Modelscited by 4
  18. 2023Survey of Consciousness Theory from Computational Perspectivecited by 3
  19. 2024From Text to Emoji: How PEFT-Driven Personality Manipulation Unleashes the Emoji Potential in LLMscited by 3
  20. 2024Personality-Guided Code Generation Using Large Language Modelscited by 3
  21. 2026Intelli-Planner: Towards Customized Urban Planning via Large Language Model Empowered Reinforcement Learningcited by 3
  22. 2025SAC: A Framework for Measuring and Inducing Personality Traits in LLMs with Dynamic Intensity Controlcited by 2
  23. 2026Dynamic Personality Adaptation in Large Language Models via State Machinescited by 2
  24. 2024Examining the Role of Relationship Alignment in Large Language Modelscited by 1
  25. 2026Imperfectly Cooperative Human-AI Interactions: Comparing the Impacts of Human and AI Attributes in Simulated and User Studiescited by 1
  26. 2025Large Language Model Agent Personality and Response Appropriateness: Evaluation by Human Linguistic Experts, LLM-as-Judge, and Natural Language Processing Modelcited by 0
  27. 2026Event-Centric Human Value Understanding in News-Domain Texts: An Actor-Conditioned, Multi-Granularity Benchmarkcited by 0
  28. 2026When Personality Meets Quantization: A Layer-wise MBTI Analysis of Quantized LLMscited by 0