# Identity-Driven Hierarchical Role-Playing Agents

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19412 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19412/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Social simulation and multi-agent debate, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 15 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Social simulation and multi-agent debate](https://mlsanity.com/agents/social-simulation-and-multi-agent-debate/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17760/) (2023)
- [Personalizing Dialogue Agents: I have a dog, do you have pets too?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07243/) (2018)
- [LaMP: When Large Language Models Meet Personalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11406/) (2023)
- [Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.10158/) (2023)
- [Exploring Collaboration Mechanisms for LLM Agents: A Social Psychology View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02124/) (2023)
- [Improving Language Model Negotiation with Self-Play and In-Context Learning from AI Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10142/) (2023)
- [CharacterEval: A Chinese Benchmark for Role-Playing Conversational Agent Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.01275/) (2024)
- [ExpertPrompting: Instructing Large Language Models to be Distinguished Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14688/) (2023)
- [Mixture-of-Experts Meets Instruction Tuning:A Winning Combination for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14705/) (2023)
- [CharacterChat: Learning towards Conversational AI with Personalized Social Support](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10278/) (2023)
- [SocialBench: Sociality Evaluation of Role-Playing Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13679/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [SocioVerse: A World Model for Social Simulation Powered by LLM Agents and A Pool of 10 Million Real-World Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10157/) (2025)
- [ElectionSim: Massive Population Election Simulation Powered by Large Language Model Driven Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20746/) (2024)
- [Multi-Agent Simulator Drives Language Models for Legal Intensive Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06882/) (2025)
- [Towards a Design Guideline for RPA Evaluation: A Survey of Large Language Model-Based Role-Playing Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13012/) (2025)
- [RoleBreak: Character Hallucination as a Jailbreak Attack in Role-Playing Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16727/) (2024)
- [Thinking in Character: Advancing Role-Playing Agents with Role-Aware Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01748/) (2025)
- [Ready Jurist One: Benchmarking Language Agents for Legal Intelligence in Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04037/) (2025)
- [The Rise of Darkness: Safety-Utility Trade-Offs in Role-Playing Dialogue Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20757/) (2025)
- [AI Agent Behavioral Science](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06366/) (2025)
- [Character-R1: Enhancing Role-Aware Reasoning in Role-Playing Agents via RLVR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04611/) (2026)
- [AI-Press: A Multi-Agent News Generating and Feedback Simulation System Powered by Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07561/) (2024)
- [Deriving Character Logic from Storyline as Codified Decision Trees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10080/) (2026)
- [AI Agents Alone Are Not (Yet) Sufficient for Social Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00113/) (2026)
- [Identifying and Mitigating Bottlenecks in Role-Playing Agents: A Systematic Study of Disentangling Character Profile Axes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04716/) (2026)
- [Codified Finite-state Machines for Role-playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05905/) (2026)
- [PHASE-Tree: Modeling Character-State Evolution in Long-Horizon Role-Playing Dialogue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06975/) (2026)
- [Through the Lens of Character: Resolving Modality-Role Interference in Multimodal Role-Playing Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09443/) (2026)
- [BOOKMARKS: Efficient Active Storyline Memory for Role-playing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14169/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Utilizing large language models (LLMs) to achieve role-playing has gained great attention recently. The primary implementation methods include leveraging refined prompts and fine-tuning on role-specific datasets. However, these methods suffer from insufficient precision and limited flexibility respectively. To achieve a balance between flexibility and precision, we construct a Hierarchical Identity Role-Playing Framework (HIRPF) based on identity theory, constructing complex characters using multiple identity combinations. We develop an identity dialogue dataset for this framework and propose an evaluation benchmark including scale evaluation and open situation evaluation. Empirical results indicate the remarkable efficacy of our framework in modeling identity-level role simulation, and reveal its potential for application in social simulation.