How Well Do LLMs Represent Values Across Cultures? Empirical Analysis of LLM Responses Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions
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Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) attempt to imitate human behavior by responding to humans in a way that pleases them, including by adhering to their values. However, humans come from diverse cultures with different values. It is critical to understand whether LLMs showcase different values to the user based on the stereotypical values of a user's known country. We prompt different LLMs with a series of advice requests based on 5 Hofstede Cultural Dimensions -- a quantifiable way of representing the values of a country. Throughout each prompt, we incorporate personas representing 36 different countries and, separately, languages predominantly tied to each country to analyze the consistency in the LLMs' cultural understanding. Through our analysis of the responses, we found that LLMs can differentiate between one side of a value and another, as well as understand that countries have differing values, but will not always uphold the values when giving advice, and fail to understand the need to answer differently based on different cultural values. Rooted in these findings, we present recommendations for training value-aligned and culturally sensitive LLMs. More importantly, the methodology and the framework developed here can help further understand and mitigate culture and language alignment issues with LLMs.
Key facts. Cited by 52 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 75 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2024.
Builds on
25 of 75 references.
References · 25
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 6; 2025: 33; 2026: 13.
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- 2025Mind the Value-Action Gap: Do LLMs Act in Alignment with Their Values?cited by 51
- 2024LLM-GLOBE: A Benchmark Evaluating the Cultural Values Embedded in LLM Outputcited by 27
- 2025Break the Checkbox: Challenging Closed-Style Evaluations of Cultural Alignment in LLMscited by 26
- 2025Multiple LLM Agents Debate for Equitable Cultural Alignmentcited by 21
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- 2025DRISHTIKON: A Multimodal Multilingual Benchmark for Testing Language Models' Understanding on Indian Culturecited by 13
- 2025ValuesRAG: Enhancing Cultural Alignment Through Retrieval-Augmented Contextual Learningcited by 10
- 2025Do Psychometric Tests Work for Large Language Models? Evaluation of Tests on Sexism, Racism, and Moralitycited by 9
- 2024Evaluating Cultural Awareness of LLMs for Yoruba, Malayalam, and Englishcited by 8
- 2025An Investigation into Value Misalignment in LLM-Generated Texts for Cultural Heritagecited by 8
- 2025Meta-Cultural Competence: Climbing the Right Hill of Cultural Awarenesscited by 8
- 2025SaudiCulture: A Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models Cultural Competence within Saudi Arabiacited by 8
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- 2026On the Cultural Anachronism and Temporal Reasoning in Vision Language Models14 May 2026
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- 2026A Unified Framework to Quantify Cultural Intelligence of AI1 Mar 2026
- 2026Value Alignment Tax: Measuring Value Trade-offs in LLM Alignment12 Feb 2026
- 2026Initial Risk Probing and Feasibility Testing of Glow: a Generative AI-Powered Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Coach for Substance Use Recovery and HIV Prevention8 Feb 2026
- 2026XCR-Bench: Benchmarking Cross-Cultural Reasoning in LLMs via Culture-Specific Items and Hall's Triad20 Jan 2026
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- 2025Counterfactual Reasoning for Steerable Pluralistic Value Alignment of Large Language Models21 Oct 2025
- 2025Identity-Aware Large Language Models require Cultural Reasoning21 Oct 2025
- 2025Culturally-Aware Conversations: A Framework & Benchmark for LLMs13 Oct 2025
- 2025Do Psychometric Tests Work for Large Language Models? Evaluation of Tests on Sexism, Racism, and Morality13 Oct 2025
- 2025EvalMORAAL: Interpretable Chain-of-Thought and LLM-as-Judge Evaluation for Moral Alignment in Large Language Models7 Oct 2025
- 2025RoleConflictBench: A Benchmark of Role Conflict Scenarios for Evaluating LLMs' Contextual Sensitivity30 Sep 2025
- 2025DRISHTIKON: A Multimodal Multilingual Benchmark for Testing Language Models' Understanding on Indian Culture23 Sep 2025
- 2025Designing LLMs for cultural sensitivity: Evidence from English-Japanese translation15 Sep 2025
- 2025AI Propaganda factories with language models27 Aug 2025
- 2025Somatic in the East, Psychological in the West?: Investigating Clinically-Grounded Cross-Cultural Depression Symptom Expression in LLMs5 Aug 2025
- 2025Do Large Language Models Understand Morality Across Cultures?28 Jul 2025
- 2025A Cross-Cultural Comparison of LLM-based Public Opinion Simulation: Evaluating Chinese and U.S. Models on Diverse Societies17 Jun 2025
- 2025A Game-Theoretic Negotiation Framework for Cross-Cultural Consensus in LLMs16 Jun 2025
- 2025Exploring Cultural Variations in Moral Judgments with Large Language Models14 Jun 2025
- 2025Multi-level Value Alignment in Agentic AI Systems: Survey and Perspectives11 Jun 2025
- 2025Multiple LLM Agents Debate for Equitable Cultural Alignment30 May 2025
- 2025Evaluating LLM Adaptation to Sociodemographic Factors: User Profile vs. Dialogue History27 May 2025
- 2025Reproducibility Study of "Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents"14 May 2025
- 2025Analyzing Cognitive Differences Among Large Language Models through the Lens of Social Worldview4 May 2025
- 2025CAReDiO: Cultural Alignment via Representativeness and Distinctiveness Guided Data Optimization9 Apr 2025
- 2025Can LLMs Grasp Implicit Cultural Values? Benchmarking LLMs' Cultural Intelligence with CQ-Bench1 Apr 2025
- 2025SaudiCulture: A Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models Cultural Competence within Saudi Arabia21 Mar 2025
- 2025Unequal Opportunities: Examining the Bias in Geographical Recommendations by Large Language Models16 Mar 2025
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- 2025Break the Checkbox: Challenging Closed-Style Evaluations of Cultural Alignment in LLMs12 Feb 2025
- 2025Meta-Cultural Competence: Climbing the Right Hill of Cultural Awareness9 Feb 2025
- 2025Position: LLMs Can be Good Tutors in English Education8 Feb 2025
- 2025Through the Prism of Culture: Evaluating LLMs' Understanding of Indian Subcultures and Traditions28 Jan 2025
- 2025Mind the Value-Action Gap: Do LLMs Act in Alignment with Their Values?26 Jan 2025
- 2025An Investigation into Value Misalignment in LLM-Generated Texts for Cultural Heritage3 Jan 2025
- 2025ValuesRAG: Enhancing Cultural Alignment Through Retrieval-Augmented Contextual Learning2 Jan 2025
- 2024LLMs as mirrors of societal moral standards: reflection of cultural divergence and agreement across ethical topics1 Dec 2024
- 2024A Survey on Human-Centric LLMs20 Nov 2024
- 2024LLM-GLOBE: A Benchmark Evaluating the Cultural Values Embedded in LLM Output9 Nov 2024
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- 2025EvalMORAAL: Interpretable Chain-of-Thought and LLM-as-Judge Evaluation for Moral Alignment in Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2025Counterfactual Reasoning for Steerable Pluralistic Value Alignment of Large Language Modelscited by 5
- 2025Identity-Aware Large Language Models require Cultural Reasoningcited by 4
- 2026XCR-Bench: Benchmarking Cross-Cultural Reasoning in LLMs via Culture-Specific Items and Hall's Triadcited by 3
- 2026On the Cultural Anachronism and Temporal Reasoning in Vision Language Modelscited by 0
- 2026On the Cultural Anachronism and Temporal Reasoning in Vision Language Models14 May 2026
- 2026XCR-Bench: Benchmarking Cross-Cultural Reasoning in LLMs via Culture-Specific Items and Hall's Triad20 Jan 2026
- 2025Counterfactual Reasoning for Steerable Pluralistic Value Alignment of Large Language Models21 Oct 2025
- 2025Identity-Aware Large Language Models require Cultural Reasoning21 Oct 2025
- 2025EvalMORAAL: Interpretable Chain-of-Thought and LLM-as-Judge Evaluation for Moral Alignment in Large Language Models7 Oct 2025
- 2025Multiple LLM Agents Debate for Equitable Cultural Alignmentcited by 21
- 2025Multi-level Value Alignment in Agentic AI Systems: Survey and Perspectivescited by 5
- 2025Law in Silico: Simulating Legal Society with LLM-Based Agentscited by 3
- 2025Reproducibility Study of "Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents"cited by 2
- 2025Law in Silico: Simulating Legal Society with LLM-Based Agents28 Oct 2025
- 2025Multi-level Value Alignment in Agentic AI Systems: Survey and Perspectives11 Jun 2025
- 2025Multiple LLM Agents Debate for Equitable Cultural Alignment30 May 2025
- 2025Reproducibility Study of "Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents"14 May 2025
- 2025Mind the Value-Action Gap: Do LLMs Act in Alignment with Their Values?cited by 51
- 2024LLM-GLOBE: A Benchmark Evaluating the Cultural Values Embedded in LLM Outputcited by 27
- 2025Break the Checkbox: Challenging Closed-Style Evaluations of Cultural Alignment in LLMscited by 26
- 2024A Survey on Human-Centric LLMscited by 13
- 2025DRISHTIKON: A Multimodal Multilingual Benchmark for Testing Language Models' Understanding on Indian Culturecited by 13
- 2025Do Psychometric Tests Work for Large Language Models? Evaluation of Tests on Sexism, Racism, and Moralitycited by 9
- 2024Evaluating Cultural Awareness of LLMs for Yoruba, Malayalam, and Englishcited by 8
- 2025An Investigation into Value Misalignment in LLM-Generated Texts for Cultural Heritagecited by 8
- 2025Meta-Cultural Competence: Climbing the Right Hill of Cultural Awarenesscited by 8
- 2025SaudiCulture: A Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models Cultural Competence within Saudi Arabiacited by 8
- 2024Cultural Fidelity in Large-Language Models: An Evaluation of Online Language Resources as a Driver of Model Performance in Value Representationcited by 7
- 2025Unequal Opportunities: Examining the Bias in Geographical Recommendations by Large Language Modelscited by 7
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- 2026NepPlural: A Human-Anchored Benchmark for Persona Annotation in Nepali Migration Discourse11 Oct 2026
- 2026AI Should Facilitate Democratic Deliberation at Scale17 Sep 2026
- 2026Accurate in space, unreliable in time: how LLMs represent national cultural change1 Sep 2026
- 2026Beyond Cultural Knowledge: Evaluating Arabic Cultural Appropriateness of Large Language Models30 Jul 2026
- 2026The "Knowledge-Behavior Gap" in Cultural Taboo Safety of Large Language Models3 Jun 2026
- 2026Improving Cross-Cultural Survey Simulation with Calibrated Value Personas15 May 2026
- 2026Measuring Opinion Bias and Sycophancy via LLM-based Persuasion23 Apr 2026
- 2026A Unified Framework to Quantify Cultural Intelligence of AI1 Mar 2026
- 2026Initial Risk Probing and Feasibility Testing of Glow: a Generative AI-Powered Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Coach for Substance Use Recovery and HIV Prevention8 Feb 2026
- 2026Knowing But Not Doing: Convergent Morality and Divergent Action in LLMs12 Jan 2026
- 2025Linear socio-demographic representations emerge in Large Language Models from indirect cues10 Dec 2025
- 2025Culturally-Aware Conversations: A Framework & Benchmark for LLMs13 Oct 2025
12 newest of 41 All 41 (JSON)