# Scaling Reasoning, Losing Control: Evaluating Instruction Following in Large Reasoning Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14810 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14810/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Mathematical reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 42 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 May 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Mathematical reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/mathematical-reasoning/)
- LLM alignment / RLHF / preference optimisation / [Process reward models for reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/alignment/process-reward-models-for-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14168/) (2021)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03874/) (2021)
- [RoFormer: Enhanced Transformer with Rotary Position Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09864/) (2021)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [DAPO: An Open-Source LLM Reinforcement Learning System at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14476/) (2025)
- [s1: Simple test-time scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.19393/) (2025)
- [Instruction-Following Evaluation for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07911/) (2023)
- [OlympiadBench: A Challenging Benchmark for Promoting AGI with Olympiad-Level Bilingual Multimodal Scientific Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14008/) (2024)
- [Qwen2.5-Math Technical Report: Toward Mathematical Expert Model via Self-Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12122/) (2024)
- [AlpacaFarm: A Simulation Framework for Methods that Learn from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14387/) (2023)
- [SFT Memorizes, RL Generalizes: A Comparative Study of Foundation Model Post-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17161/) (2025)
- [SimpleRL-Zoo: Investigating and Taming Zero Reinforcement Learning for Open Base Models in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18892/) (2025)
- [Process Reinforcement through Implicit Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01456/) (2025)
- [Open-Reasoner-Zero: An Open Source Approach to Scaling Up Reinforcement Learning on the Base Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.24290/) (2025)
- [L1: Controlling How Long A Reasoning Model Thinks With Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04697/) (2025)
- [Demystifying Long Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03373/) (2025)
- [DeepSeek-Prover-V2: Advancing Formal Mathematical Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning for Subgoal Decomposition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.21801/) (2025)
- [Learning to Reason under Off-Policy Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14945/) (2025)
- [MultiChallenge: A Realistic Multi-Turn Conversation Evaluation Benchmark Challenging to Frontier LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17399/) (2025)
- [Crossing the Reward Bridge: Expanding RL with Verifiable Rewards Across Diverse Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23829/) (2025)
- [The Impact of Reasoning Step Length on Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04925/) (2024)
- [Benchmarking Complex Instruction-Following with Multiple Constraints Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.03978/) (2024)
- [GPG: A Simple and Strong Reinforcement Learning Baseline for Model Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02546/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Efficient Reasoning for Large Reasoning Models: Language, Multimodality, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21614/) (2025)
- [FollowBench: A Multi-level Fine-grained Constraints Following Benchmark for Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.20410/) (2023)
- [Multi-IF: Benchmarking LLMs on Multi-Turn and Multilingual Instructions Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.15553/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [A Survey of Reinforcement Learning for Large Reasoning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08827/) (2025)
- [Advancing Multimodal Reasoning: From Optimized Cold Start to Staged Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.04207/) (2025)
- [StockBench: Can LLM Agents Trade Stocks Profitably In Real-world Markets?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.02209/) (2025)
- [AutoTIR: Autonomous Tools Integrated Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21836/) (2025)
- [Activation Steering for Chain-of-Thought Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04742/) (2025)
- [Towards Concise and Adaptive Thinking in Large Reasoning Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09662/) (2025)
- [AutoLink: Autonomous Schema Exploration and Expansion for Scalable Schema Linking in Text-to-SQL at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17190/) (2025)
- [Chain-of-Thought Hijacking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26418/) (2025)
- [ReasonIF: Large Reasoning Models Fail to Follow Instructions During Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15211/) (2025)
- [Retrieval-of-Thought: Efficient Reasoning via Reusing Thoughts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21743/) (2025)
- [Position: The Hidden Costs and Measurement Gaps of Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21882/) (2025)
- [Test-Time Scaling in Reasoning Models Is Not Effective for Knowledge-Intensive Tasks Yet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.06861/) (2025)
- [RAIN-Merging: A Gradient-Free Method to Enhance Instruction Following in Large Reasoning Models with Preserved Thinking Format](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.22538/) (2026)
- [How Many Code and Test Cases Are Enough? Evaluating Test Cases Generation from a Binary-Matrix Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.08720/) (2025)
- [The Policy Cliff: A Theoretical Analysis of Reward-Policy Maps in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20150/) (2025)
- [Evaluating Language Model Reasoning about Confidential Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19980/) (2025)
- [ImpRIF: Stronger Implicit Reasoning Leads to Better Complex Instruction Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21228/) (2026)
- [LogicIF: Towards Complex Logic Instruction Following](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09125/) (2025)
- [On the Robustness of Answer Formats in Medical Reasoning Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.20866/) (2025)
- [On the Paradoxical Interference between Instruction-Following and Task Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22047/) (2026)
- [Distill What You Trust: Reliability-Aware Multi-Teacher On-Policy Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23697/) (2026)
- [Reasoning Model Is Superior LLM-Judge, Yet Suffers from Biases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03630/) (2026)
- [AdaptEval: A Benchmark for Evaluating Large Language Models on Code Snippet Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04540/) (2026)
- [Verifier-Induced Support Reshaping in On-Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00220/) (2026)
- [Decomposing Refusal Steering in Mixture-of-Experts Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04160/) (2026)
- [Structured Thoughts For Improved Reasoning And Context Pruning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10386/) (2026)
- [Diagnosing with Insights: Structured Analysis of Agent Failures via Behavioral Abstractions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02371/) (2026)
- [Learned Reporting Preferences in RLVR Can Conflict with the Current Request](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36587/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Instruction-following is essential for aligning large language models (LLMs) with user intent. While recent reasoning-oriented models exhibit impressive performance on complex mathematical problems, their ability to adhere to natural language instructions remains underexplored. In this work, we introduce MathIF, a dedicated benchmark for evaluating instruction-following in mathematical reasoning tasks. Our empirical analysis reveals a consistent tension between scaling up reasoning capacity and maintaining controllability, as models that reason more effectively often struggle to comply with user directives. We find that models tuned on distilled long chains-of-thought or trained with reasoning-oriented reinforcement learning often degrade in instruction adherence, especially when generation length increases. Furthermore, we show that even simple interventions can partially recover obedience, though at the cost of reasoning performance. These findings highlight a fundamental tension in current LLM training paradigms and motivate the need for more instruction-aware reasoning models. We release the code and data at https://github.com/TingchenFu/MathIF.