# On Emergent Social World Models -- Evidence for Functional Integration of Theory of Mind and Pragmatic Reasoning in Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10298 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10298/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in World models for language agents, one of 11 directions in World models.
- Builds on 10 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Feb 2026.

## Placed in

- World models / [World models for language agents](https://mlsanity.com/wm/world-models-for-language-agents/)
- LLM reasoning / [Reasoning benchmarks and evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/lr/reasoning-benchmarks-and-evaluation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Interpretability in the Wild: a Circuit for Indirect Object Identification in GPT-2 small](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00593/) (2022)
- [Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.08399/) (2023)
- [How to use and interpret activation patching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.15255/) (2024)
- [Chess as a Testbed for Language Model State Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13249/) (2021)
- [SimpleToM: Exposing the Gap between Explicit ToM Inference and Implicit ToM Application in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13648/) (2024)
- [Language Models Represent Beliefs of Self and Others](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18496/) (2024)
- [A Systematic Review on the Evaluation of Large Language Models in Theory of Mind Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.08796/) (2025)
- [Brittle Minds, Fixable Activations: Understanding Belief Representations in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17513/) (2024)
- [Tug-of-war between idioms' figurative and literal interpretations in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01723/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [A paradox of AI fluency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25905/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper investigates whether LMs recruit shared computational mechanisms for general Theory of Mind (ToM) and language-specific pragmatic reasoning in order to contribute to the general question of whether LMs may be said to have emergent "social world models", i.e., representations of mental states that are repurposed across tasks (the functional integration hypothesis). Using behavioral evaluations and causal-mechanistic experiments via functional localization methods inspired by cognitive neuroscience, we analyze LMs' performance across seven subcategories of ToM abilities (Beaudoin et al., 2020) on a substantially larger localizer dataset than used in prior like-minded work. Results from stringent hypothesis-driven statistical testing offer suggestive evidence for the functional integration hypothesis, indicating that LMs may develop interconnected "social world models" rather than isolated competencies. This work contributes novel ToM localizer data, methodological refinements to functional localization techniques, and empirical insights into the emergence of social cognition in artificial systems.