mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

DailyDilemmas: Revealing Value Preferences of LLMs with Quandaries of Daily Life

arXiv 2410.02683 ↗First posted 3 Oct 2024cs.CL cs.AI cs.LGcited by 57

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Abstract (arXiv)

As users increasingly seek guidance from LLMs for decision-making in daily life, many of these decisions are not clear-cut and depend significantly on the personal values and ethical standards of people. We present DailyDilemmas, a dataset of 1,360 moral dilemmas encountered in everyday life. Each dilemma presents two possible actions, along with affected parties and relevant human values for each action. Based on these dilemmas, we gather a repository of human values covering diverse everyday topics, such as interpersonal relationships, workplace, and environmental issues. With DailyDilemmas, we evaluate LLMs on these dilemmas to determine what action they will choose and the values represented by these action choices. Then, we analyze values through the lens of five theoretical frameworks inspired by sociology, psychology, and philosophy, including the World Values Survey, Moral Foundations Theory, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Aristotle's Virtues, and Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. For instance, we find LLMs are most aligned with self-expression over survival in World Values Survey and care over loyalty in Moral Foundations Theory. Interestingly, we find substantial preference differences in models for some core values. For example, for truthfulness, Mixtral-8x7B neglects it by 9.7% while GPT-4-turbo selects it by 9.4%. We also study the recent guidance released by OpenAI (ModelSpec), and Anthropic (Constitutional AI) to understand how their designated principles reflect their models' actual value prioritization when facing nuanced moral reasoning in daily-life settings. Finally, we find that end users cannot effectively steer such prioritization using system prompts.

Key facts. Cited by 57 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 27 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2024.

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27 of 55 references.

References · 27

  1. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,393
  2. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  3. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  4. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  5. 2022Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language modelscited by 1,970
  6. 2021A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignmentcited by 1,023
  7. 2023Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Modelscited by 988
  8. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 805
  9. 2023OpenAssistant Conversations -- Democratizing Large Language Model Alignmentcited by 712
  10. 2020Aligning AI With Shared Human Valuescited by 706
  11. 2023Towards Measuring the Representation of Subjective Global Opinions in Language Modelscited by 424
  12. 2023Trustworthy LLMs: a Survey and Guideline for Evaluating Large Language Models' Alignmentcited by 394
15 more
  1. 2023Character-LLM: A Trainable Agent for Role-Playingcited by 335
  2. 2021Understanding Dataset Difficulty with V-Usable Informationcited by 288
  3. 2020Social Chemistry 101: Learning to Reason about Social and Moral Normscited by 253
  4. 2024HelpSteer2: Open-source dataset for training top-performing reward modelscited by 232
  5. 2023Evaluating the Moral Beliefs Encoded in LLMscited by 211
  6. 2023Assessing Cross-Cultural Alignment between ChatGPT and Human Societies: An Empirical Studycited by 203
  7. 2023Do the Rewards Justify the Means? Measuring Trade-Offs Between Rewards and Ethical Behavior in the MACHIAVELLI Benchmarkcited by 174
  8. 2022Probing Pre-Trained Language Models for Cross-Cultural Differences in Valuescited by 147
  9. 2021Can Machines Learn Morality? The Delphi Experimentcited by 140
  10. 2024HelpSteer2-Preference: Complementing Ratings with Preferencescited by 129
  11. 2020Scruples: A Corpus of Community Ethical Judgments on 32,000 Real-Life Anecdotescited by 100
  12. 2023Value Kaleidoscope: Engaging AI with Pluralistic Human Values, Rights, and Dutiescited by 97
  13. 2022When to Make Exceptions: Exploring Language Models as Accounts of Human Moral Judgmentcited by 93
  14. 2023NLPositionality: Characterizing Design Biases of Datasets and Modelscited by 91
  15. 2020Quantifying social organization and political polarization in online platformscited by 30

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 25; 2026: 31.

57 papers.

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  1. 2025Utility Engineering: Analyzing and Controlling Emergent Value Systems in AIscited by 63
  2. 2025Values in the Wild: Discovering and Analyzing Values in Real-World Language Model Interactionscited by 47
  3. 2025Break the Checkbox: Challenging Closed-Style Evaluations of Cultural Alignment in LLMscited by 26
  4. 2025Synthetic Socratic Debates: Examining Persona Effects on Moral Decision and Persuasion Dynamicscited by 19
  5. 2025Will AI Tell Lies to Save Sick Children? Litmus-Testing AI Values Prioritization with AIRiskDilemmascited by 17
  6. 2025The Staircase of Ethics: Probing LLM Value Priorities through Multi-Step Induction to Complex Moral Dilemmascited by 13
  7. 2025Generative Value Conflicts Reveal LLM Prioritiescited by 13
  8. 2025CLASH: Evaluating Language Models on Judging High-Stakes Dilemmas from Multiple Perspectivescited by 10
  9. 2025Discerning What Matters: A Multi-Dimensional Assessment of Moral Competence in LLMscited by 10
  10. 2025Stress-Testing Model Specs Reveals Character Differences among Language Modelscited by 10
  11. 2024MM-MoralBench: A MultiModal Moral Evaluation Benchmark for Large Vision-Language Modelscited by 9
  12. 2025Interactive Reasoning: Visualizing and Controlling Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 9
38 more
  1. 2025Do Psychometric Tests Work for Large Language Models? Evaluation of Tests on Sexism, Racism, and Moralitycited by 9
  2. 2026The Fragility Of Moral Judgment In Large Language Modelscited by 8
  3. 2025EvalMORAAL: Interpretable Chain-of-Thought and LLM-as-Judge Evaluation for Moral Alignment in Large Language Modelscited by 6
  4. 2025CURE: Cultural Understanding and Reasoning Evaluation - A Framework for "Thick" Culture Alignment Evaluation in LLMscited by 6
  5. 2025Agent-to-Agent Theory of Mind: Testing Interlocutor Awareness among Large Language Modelscited by 5
  6. 2025Counterfactual Reasoning for Steerable Pluralistic Value Alignment of Large Language Modelscited by 5
  7. 2026Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishingcited by 5
  8. 2025Multi-level Value Alignment in Agentic AI Systems: Survey and Perspectivescited by 4
  9. 2025RoleConflictBench: A Benchmark of Role Conflict Scenarios for Evaluating LLMs' Contextual Sensitivitycited by 4
  10. 2026Asymmetric Goal Drift in Coding Agents Under Value Conflictcited by 4
  11. 2026Human Values Matter: Investigating How Misalignment Shapes Collective Behaviors in LLM Agent Communitiescited by 4
  12. 2025EVALUESTEER: Measuring Reward Model Steerability Towards Values and Preferencescited by 3
  13. 2026Culturally Grounded Personas in Large Language Models: Characterization and Alignment with Socio-Psychological Value Frameworkscited by 3
  14. 2026Ads in AI Chatbots? An Analysis of How Large Language Models Navigate Conflicts of Interestcited by 3
  15. 2025Do Language Models Think Consistently? A Study of Value Preferences Across Varying Response Lengthscited by 2
  16. 2025Interaction Protocol Shapes Moral Judgment in Multi-Agent Debatecited by 2
  17. 2026Meet Dynamic Individual Preferences: Resolving Conflicting Human Value with Paired Fine-Tuningcited by 2
  18. 2026Incoherent Values? Probing LLM Preferences Through Parametric Variationcited by 2
  19. 2025Design and Evaluation of Generative Agent-based Platform for Human-Assistant Interaction Research: A Tale of 10 User Studiescited by 1
  20. 2026Growth First, Care Second? Tracing the Landscape of LLM Value Preferences in Everyday Dilemmascited by 1
  21. 2026Common Sense vs. Morality: The Curious Case of Narrative Focus Bias in LLMscited by 1
  22. 2026Are Dilemmas and Conflicts in LLM Alignment Solvable? A View from Priority Graphcited by 1
  23. 2026Distributional Open-Ended Evaluation of LLM Cultural Value Alignment Based on Value Codebookcited by 1
  24. 2026From Weights to Words: Expressing and Editing Preference Model Inferences in Natural Languagecited by 1
  25. 2026D2VBench: Benchmarking Large Language Models with Value Dilemmas in Daily Scenarioscited by 1
  26. 2026Position: Behavioral Systems Require Behavioral Testscited by 1
  27. 2026STONIC: A Layered Measurement Contract for LLM Value Profilingcited by 1
  28. 2025NurValues: Real-World Nursing Values Evaluation for Large Language Models in Clinical Contextcited by 0
  29. 2025VIVA+: Human-Centered Situational Decision-Makingcited by 0
  30. 2025The Realignment Problem: When Right becomes Wrong in LLMscited by 0
  31. 2026Value-Action Alignment in Large Language Models under Privacy-Prosocial Conflictcited by 0
  32. 2026Intra-Fairness Dynamics: The Bias Spillover Effect in Targeted LLM Alignmentcited by 0
  33. 2026Where Paths Split: Localized, Calibrated Control of Moral Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 0
  34. 2026Do Gender Cues Affect LLM Value Trade-offs? Evidence from a Controlled Decision Benchmarkcited by 0
  35. 2026RobotValues: Evaluating Household Robots When Human Values Conflictcited by 0
  36. 2026Superficial Beliefs in LLM Decision-Makingcited by 0
  37. 2026Narration-of-Thought: Inference-Time Scaffolding for Defeasible Ethical Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 0
  38. 2026Can LLMs Imagine Moral Alternatives Beyond Binary Dilemmas?cited by 0

50 most cited of 57 All 57 (JSON)

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  1. 2025From Stability to Inconsistency: A Study of Moral Preferences in LLMs
  2. 2025The Greatest Good Benchmark: Measuring LLMs' Alignment with Utilitarian Moral Dilemmas
  3. 2025Normative Evaluation of Large Language Models with Everyday Moral Dilemmas
  4. 2025Mind the Value-Action Gap: Do LLMs Act in Alignment with Their Values?
  5. 2025Comparing Moral Values in Western English-speaking societies and LLMs with Word Associations
  6. 2025The Morality of Probability: How Implicit Moral Biases in LLMs May Shape the Future of Human-AI Symbiosis
  7. 2026Do LLMs Have Values? A Quantitative Analysis and Alignment Framework for Values in Large Language Models
  8. 2025Survey-to-Behavior: Downstream Alignment of Human Values in LLMs via Survey Questions