The Silicon Psyche: Anthropomorphic Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models
On the map: LLM safety and security → Safety alignment, refusal and guardrails
Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly transitioning from conversational assistants to autonomous agents embedded in critical organizational functions, including Security Operations Centers (SOCs), financial systems, and infrastructure management. Current adversarial testing paradigms focus predominantly on technical attack vectors: prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data exfiltration. We argue this focus is catastrophically incomplete. LLMs, trained on vast corpora of human-generated text, have inherited not merely human knowledge but human textitpsychological architecture -- including the pre-cognitive vulnerabilities that render humans susceptible to social engineering, authority manipulation, and affective exploitation. This paper presents the first systematic application of the Cybersecurity Psychology Framework (cpf), a 100-indicator taxonomy of human psychological vulnerabilities, to non-human cognitive agents. We introduce the Synthetic Psychometric Assessment Protocol (sysname), a methodology for converting cpf indicators into adversarial scenarios targeting LLM decision-making. Our preliminary hypothesis testing across seven major LLM families reveals a disturbing pattern: while models demonstrate robust defenses against traditional jailbreaks, they exhibit critical susceptibility to authority-gradient manipulation, temporal pressure exploitation, and convergent-state attacks that mirror human cognitive failure modes. We term this phenomenon Anthropomorphic Vulnerability Inheritance (AVI) and propose that the security community must urgently develop ``psychological firewalls'' -- intervention mechanisms adapted from the Cybersecurity Psychology Intervention Framework (cpif) -- to protect AI agents operating in adversarial environments.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Safety alignment, refusal and guardrails, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security. Builds on 12 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Dec 2025.
Builds on
12 of 39 references.
References · 12
- 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
- 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
- 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
- 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
- 2023Jailbroken: How Does LLM Safety Training Fail?cited by 1,565
- 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
- 2024How Johnny Can Persuade LLMs to Jailbreak Them: Rethinking Persuasion to Challenge AI Safety by Humanizing LLMscited by 533
- 2023Large Language Models Understand and Can be Enhanced by Emotional Stimulicited by 143
- 2025Verbalized Sampling: How to Mitigate Mode Collapse and Unlock LLM Diversitycited by 100
- 2023Ignore This Title and HackAPrompt: Exposing Systemic Vulnerabilities of LLMs through a Global Scale Prompt Hacking Competitioncited by 65
- 2025Comparing AI Agents to Cybersecurity Professionals in Real-World Penetration Testingcited by 14
- 2025MORPHEUS: A Multidimensional Framework for Modeling, Measuring, and Mitigating Human Factors in Cybersecuritycited by 1
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