mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Replicating Human Motivated Reasoning Studies with LLMs

arXiv 2601.16130 ↗First posted 22 Jan 2026cs.HC cs.AIcited by 5

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation

Abstract (arXiv)

Motivated reasoning - the idea that individuals processing information may be motivated to either arrive at accurate beliefs or arrive at desired conclusions - has been well-explored as a human phenomenon. However, it remains unclear whether base LLMs are affected by motivational manipulations. Replicating 4 prior political motivated reasoning studies, we find that base LLM behavior does not align with expected human behavior. Furthermore, base LLM behavior across models shares some similarities, such as when selecting to abstain from question answering and incorporating provided arguments into opinions. The results suggest that base LLMs may not emulate human motivated reasoning processes. We emphasize the importance of these findings for researchers using LLMs to for certain tasks such as opinion replication and argument assessment.

Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 16 of its 39 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Jan 2026.

Builds on

16 of 39 references.

References · 16

  1. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
  2. 2022Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samplescited by 752
  3. 2024LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own Generationscited by 686
  4. 2024From Generation to Judgment: Opportunities and Challenges of LLM-as-a-judgecited by 494
  5. 2022Towards Understanding Chain-of-Thought Prompting: An Empirical Study of What Matterscited by 222
  6. 2024Measuring Political Bias in Large Language Models: What Is Said and How It Is Saidcited by 89
  7. 2024Evaluating Large Language Model Biases in Persona-Steered Generationcited by 78
  8. 2024Towards Implicit Bias Detection and Mitigation in Multi-Agent LLM Interactionscited by 51
  9. 2022Re-Examining System-Level Correlations of Automatic Summarization Evaluation Metricscited by 38
  10. 2023Learn to Refuse: Making Large Language Models More Controllable and Reliable through Knowledge Scope Limitation and Refusal Mechanismcited by 33
  11. 2024Mapping and Influencing the Political Ideology of Large Language Models using Synthetic Personascited by 16
  12. 2025Only a Little to the Left: A Theory-grounded Measure of Political Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 15
4 more
  1. 2025Benchmarking LLMs for Political Science: A United Nations Perspectivecited by 10
  2. 2025Silenced Biases: The Dark Side LLMs Learned to Refusecited by 10
  3. 2025Modeling Motivated Reasoning in Law: Evaluating Strategic Role Conditioning in LLM Summarizationcited by 3
  4. 2025How LLMs Fail to Support Fact-Checkingcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.

5 papers.

  1. 2026Human Cognition in Machines: A Unified Perspective of World Modelscited by 5
  2. 2026Increasing intelligence in AI agents can worsen collective outcomescited by 2
  3. 2026Can LLMs Emulate Human Belief Dynamics?cited by 0
  4. 2026Bayesian and Motivated Reasoning in AI Agentscited by 0
  5. 2026Before You Poll with LLMs: A Deliberative Diagnostic Frameworkcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2024Do LLMs Exhibit Human-Like Reasoning? Evaluating Theory of Mind in LLMs for Open-Ended Responses
  2. 2025Persona-Assigned Large Language Models Exhibit Human-Like Motivated Reasoning
  3. 2023Are LLMs the Master of All Trades? : Exploring Domain-Agnostic Reasoning Skills of LLMs
  4. 2025Causal Strengths and Leaky Beliefs: Interpreting LLM Reasoning via Noisy-OR Causal Bayes Nets
  5. 2024Take Caution in Using LLMs as Human Surrogates: Scylla Ex Machina
  6. 2025The Ends Justify the Thoughts: RL-Induced Motivated Reasoning in LLM CoTs
  7. 2024How Likely Do LLMs with CoT Mimic Human Reasoning?
  8. 2025MotiveBench: How Far Are We From Human-Like Motivational Reasoning in Large Language Models?