mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

OpenToM: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Theory-of-Mind Reasoning Capabilities of Large Language Models

arXiv 2402.06044 ↗First posted 8 Feb 2024cs.AI cs.CLcited by 54

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

Neural Theory-of-Mind (N-ToM), machine's ability to understand and keep track of the mental states of others, is pivotal in developing socially intelligent agents. However, prevalent N-ToM benchmarks have several shortcomings, including the presence of ambiguous and artificial narratives, absence of personality traits and preferences, a lack of questions addressing characters' psychological mental states, and limited diversity in the questions posed. In response to these issues, we construct OpenToM, a new benchmark for assessing N-ToM with (1) longer and clearer narrative stories, (2) characters with explicit personality traits, (3) actions that are triggered by character intentions, and (4) questions designed to challenge LLMs' capabilities of modeling characters' mental states of both the physical and psychological world. Using OpenToM, we reveal that state-of-the-art LLMs thrive at modeling certain aspects of mental states in the physical world but fall short when tracking characters' mental states in the psychological world.

Key facts. Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 30 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Feb 2024.

Builds on

30 of 60 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2023Think Twice: Perspective-Taking Improves Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mind Capabilities16 Nov
  2. 2023Understanding Social Reasoning in Language Models with Language Models21 Jun
  3. 2022Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Models7 Oct

Other references · 27

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
  2. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,971
  3. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,380
  4. 2023Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Modelscited by 13,028
  5. 2023Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Modelcited by 8,065
  6. 2023Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4cited by 2,592
  7. 2022Red Teaming Language Models with Language Modelscited by 1,026
  8. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 836
  9. 2020Towards Faithfully Interpretable NLP Systems: How should we define and evaluate faithfulness?cited by 599
  10. 2022ToxiGen: A Large-Scale Machine-Generated Dataset for Adversarial and Implicit Hate Speech Detectioncited by 422
  11. 2023SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agentscited by 367
  12. 2015Towards AI-Complete Question Answering: A Set of Prerequisite Toy Taskscited by 314
15 more
  1. 2023Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Taskscited by 292
  2. 2023Faithful Chain-of-Thought Reasoningcited by 288
  3. 2022Neural Theory-of-Mind? On the Limits of Social Intelligence in Large LMscited by 220
  4. 2023FANToM: A Benchmark for Stress-testing Machine Theory of Mind in Interactionscited by 171
  5. 2022SODA: Million-scale Dialogue Distillation with Social Commonsense Contextualizationcited by 168
  6. 2023The Generative AI Paradox: "What It Can Create, It May Not Understand"cited by 98
  7. 2023Minding Language Models' (Lack of) Theory of Mind: A Plug-and-Play Multi-Character Belief Trackercited by 95
  8. 2020The Turking Test: Can Language Models Understand Instructions?cited by 82
  9. 2023How FaR Are Large Language Models From Agents with Theory-of-Mind?cited by 76
  10. 2018Evaluating Theory of Mind in Question Answeringcited by 64
  11. 2023ToMChallenges: A Principle-Guided Dataset and Diverse Evaluation Tasks for Exploring Theory of Mindcited by 28
  12. 2023COKE: A Cognitive Knowledge Graph for Machine Theory of Mindcited by 27
  13. 2023The Neuro-Symbolic Inverse Planning Engine (NIPE): Modeling Probabilistic Social Inferences from Linguistic Inputscited by 23
  14. 2022I Cast Detect Thoughts: Learning to Converse and Guide with Intents and Theory-of-Mind in Dungeons and Dragonscited by 22
  15. 2023Memory-Augmented Theory of Mind Networkcited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 9; 2025: 25; 2026: 20.

54 papers.

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By area:

  1. 2024From Persona to Personalization: A Survey on Role-Playing Language Agentscited by 212
  2. 2024LLM as a Mastermind: A Survey of Strategic Reasoning with Large Language Modelscited by 99
  3. 2024SimpleToM: Exposing the Gap between Explicit ToM Inference and Implicit ToM Application in LLMscited by 57
  4. 2025Language Models use Lookbacks to Track Beliefscited by 39
  5. 2025The Traitors: Deception and Trust in Multi-Agent Language Model Simulationscited by 34
  6. 2024Explore Theory of Mind: Program-guided adversarial data generation for theory of mind reasoningcited by 33
  7. 2025Hypothesis-Driven Theory-of-Mind Reasoning for Large Language Modelscited by 29
  8. 2024Jailbreak Antidote: Runtime Safety-Utility Balance via Sparse Representation Adjustment in Large Language Modelscited by 23
  9. 2024Reading Subtext: Evaluating Large Language Models on Short Story Summarization with Writerscited by 19
  10. 2024Autonomous Agents for Collaborative Task under Information Asymmetrycited by 16
  11. 2025SoMi-ToM: Evaluating Multi-Perspective Theory of Mind in Embodied Social Interactionscited by 16
  12. 2025Rethinking Theory of Mind Benchmarks for LLMs: Towards A User-Centered Perspectivecited by 14
38 more
  1. 2025ToMAP: Training Opponent-Aware LLM Persuaders with Theory of Mindcited by 12
  2. 2025LLM-Hanabi: Evaluating Multi-Agent Gameplays with Theory-of-Mind and Rationale Inference in Imperfect Information Collaboration Gamecited by 8
  3. 2024Belief in the Machine: Investigating Epistemological Blind Spots of Language Modelscited by 6
  4. 2025R^3-VQA: "Read the Room" by Video Social Reasoningcited by 6
  5. 2025SVBench: Evaluation of Video Generation Models on Social Reasoningcited by 6
  6. 2024CreDes: Causal Reasoning Enhancement and Dual-End Searching for Solving Long-Range Reasoning Problems using LLMscited by 5
  7. 2025From Black Boxes to Transparent Minds: Evaluating and Enhancing the Theory of Mind in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 5
  8. 2026Evaluating Theory of Mind and Internal Beliefs in LLM-Based Multi-Agent Systemscited by 5
  9. 2026Social-R1: Towards Human-like Social Reasoning in LLMscited by 5
  10. 2025The Decrypto Benchmark for Multi-Agent Reasoning and Theory of Mindcited by 4
  11. 2025Enhancing Conversational Agents with Theory of Mind: Aligning Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions for Human-Like Interactioncited by 3
  12. 2025H2HTalk: Evaluating Large Language Models as Emotional Companioncited by 3
  13. 2026EnactToM: An Evolving Benchmark for Functional Theory of Mind in Embodied Agentscited by 3
  14. 2025InMind: Evaluating LLMs in Capturing and Applying Individual Human Reasoning Stylescited by 2
  15. 2026To Think or Not To Think, That is The Question for Large Reasoning Models in Theory of Mind Taskscited by 2
  16. 2026DPBench: Structural Determinants of Multi-Agent LLM Coordination Under Simultaneous Resource Contentioncited by 2
  17. 2026Beyond Words: Evaluating and Bridging Epistemic Divergence in User-Agent Interaction via Theory of Mindcited by 2
  18. 2026OmniToM: Benchmarking Theory of Mind in LLMs via Explicit Belief Modelingcited by 2
  19. 2026From Shortcuts to Reasoning: Robust Post-Training of Theory of Mind with Reinforcement Learningcited by 2
  20. 2025BeliefNest: A Joint Action Simulator for Embodied Agents with Theory of Mindcited by 1
  21. 2025Can Large Language Models Capture Human Risk Preferences? A Cross-Cultural Studycited by 1
  22. 2025Evaluating Contrast Localizer for Identifying Causal Units in Social & Mathematical Tasks in Language Modelscited by 1
  23. 2025Are Vision Language Models Cross-Cultural Theory of Mind Reasoners?cited by 1
  24. 2025Modeling the Mental World for Embodied AI: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 1
  25. 2026Large Language Models Persuade Without Planning Theory of Mindcited by 1
  26. 2026Playing Along: Learning a Double-Agent Defender for Belief Steering via Theory of Mindcited by 1
  27. 2026Perception or Prejudice: Can MLLMs Go Beyond First Impressions of Personality?cited by 1
  28. 2026EUDAIMONIA: Evaluating Undesirable Dynamics in AIcited by 1
  29. 2026A formal definition and meta-model for a machine theory of mindcited by 1
  30. 2026Theory of Mind and Persuasion Beyond Conversation: Assessing the Capacity of LLMs to Induce Belief States via Planning and Actioncited by 1
  31. 2026Mind2Dialogue: Training Human-Aware Language Models by Simulating User Mental Statescited by 1
  32. 2025Sensitivity Meets Sparsity: The Impact of Extremely Sparse Parameter Patterns on Theory-of-Mind of Large Language Modelscited by 0
  33. 2025textttDIAMONDs: A Dataset for mathbbDynamic mathbbInformation mathbbAnd mathbbMental modeling mathbbOf mathbbNumeric mathbbDiscussionscited by 0
  34. 2025TimeHC-RL: Temporal-aware Hierarchical Cognitive Reinforcement Learning for Enhancing LLMs' Social Intelligencecited by 0
  35. 2025EvolvTrip: Enhancing Literary Character Understanding with Temporal Theory-of-Mind Graphscited by 0
  36. 2025Language Models Might Not Understand You: Evaluating Theory of Mind via Story Promptingcited by 0
  37. 2025Circuit Distillationcited by 0
  38. 2026CEI: A Benchmark for Evaluating Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 0

50 most cited of 54 All 54 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Probing the Robustness of Theory of Mind in Large Language Models
  2. 2023Clever Hans or Neural Theory of Mind? Stress Testing Social Reasoning in Large Language Models
  3. 2024TimeToM: Temporal Space is the Key to Unlocking the Door of Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mind
  4. 2024Multi-ToM: Evaluating Multilingual Theory of Mind Capabilities in Large Language Models
  5. 2025The Essence of Contextual Understanding in Theory of Mind: A Study on Question Answering with Story Characters
  6. 2026DialToM: A Theory of Mind Benchmark for Forecasting State-Driven Dialogue Trajectories
  7. 2025XToM: Exploring the Multilingual Theory of Mind for Large Language Models
  8. 2025Do Theory of Mind Benchmarks Need Explicit Human-like Reasoning in Language Models?