MemSyco-Bench: Benchmarking Sycophancy in Agent Memory
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent memory systems
Abstract (arXiv)
Memory has emerged as a cornerstone of modern LLM-based agents, supporting their evolution from single-turn assistants to long-term collaborators. However, memory is not always beneficial: retrieved memories often induce a critical issue of sycophancy, causing agents to over-align with the user at the cost of factual accuracy or objective reasoning. Despite this emerging risk, existing memory benchmarks primarily evaluate whether memories are correctly stored, retrieved, or updated, while overlooking how retrieved memories influence downstream reasoning and decision-making. To bridge this gap, we propose MemSyco-Bench, a comprehensive benchmark for evaluating memory-induced sycophancy in agent systems. MemSyco-Bench measures when memory should influence a decision and how valid memory should be used. Specifically, it covers five tasks that assess whether agents can reject memory as factual evidence, respect its applicable scope, resolve conflicts between memory and objective evidence, track memory updates, and use valid memory for personalization. All related resources are collected for the community at https://github.com/XMUDeepLIT/MemSyco-Bench.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent memory systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 54 of its 61 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 1 Jul 2026.
Builds on
54 of 61 references.
Closest ancestors · 18
Same direction, newest first
- 2026STALE: Can LLM Agents Know When Their Memories Are No Longer Valid?7 May
- 2026MemoryArena: Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Tasks18 Feb
- 2026Graph-based Agent Memory: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applications5 Feb
- 2026OP-Bench: Benchmarking Over-Personalization for Memory-Augmented Personalized Conversational Agents20 Jan
- 2026TiMem: Temporal-Hierarchical Memory Consolidation for Long-Horizon Conversational Agents6 Jan
- 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agents15 Dec
- 2025PersonaMem-v2: Towards Personalized Intelligence via Learning Implicit User Personas and Agentic Memory7 Dec
- 2025Enabling Personalized Long-term Interactions in LLM-based Agents through Persistent Memory and User Profiles9 Oct
- 2025MIRIX: Multi-Agent Memory System for LLM-Based Agents10 Jul
- 2025G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systems9 Jun
- 2025Memory OS of AI Agent30 May
- 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memory28 Apr
6 more
- 2025In Prospect and Retrospect: Reflective Memory Management for Long-term Personalized Dialogue Agents11 Mar
- 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents17 Feb
- 2025Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memory20 Jan
- 2024Crafting Personalized Agents through Retrieval-Augmented Generation on Editable Memory Graphs28 Sep
- 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agents21 Apr
- 2024Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agents27 Feb
Other references · 36
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
- 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
- 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,820
- 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
- 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,242
- 2023MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systemscited by 1,389
- 2023Towards Understanding Sycophancy in Language Modelscited by 1,040
- 2026DeepSeek-V4: Towards Highly Efficient Million-Token Context Intelligencecited by 1,040
- 2024LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memorycited by 707
- 2024LongBench v2: Towards Deeper Understanding and Reasoning on Realistic Long-context Multitaskscited by 379
- 2023Simple synthetic data reduces sycophancy in large language modelscited by 187
24 more
- 2025LightMem: Lightweight and Efficient Memory-Augmented Generationcited by 180
- 2024Sycophancy to Subterfuge: Investigating Reward-Tampering in Large Language Modelscited by 178
- 2025Know Me, Respond to Me: Benchmarking LLMs for Dynamic User Profiling and Personalized Responses at Scalecited by 178
- 2025SycEval: Evaluating LLM Sycophancycited by 108
- 2025Measuring Sycophancy of Language Models in Multi-turn Dialoguescited by 104
- 2024Sycophancy in Large Language Models: Causes and Mitigationscited by 101
- 2023When Large Language Models contradict humans? Large Language Models' Sycophantic Behaviourcited by 62
- 2025MemoryBench: A Benchmark for Memory and Continual Learning in LLM Systemscited by 61
- 2024From Yes-Men to Truth-Tellers: Addressing Sycophancy in Large Language Models with Pinpoint Tuningcited by 54
- 2025When Truth Is Overridden: Uncovering the Internal Origins of Sycophancy in Large Language Modelscited by 50
- 2025When to use Graphs in RAG: A Comprehensive Analysis for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 48
- 2025TRUTH DECAY: Quantifying Multi-Turn Sycophancy in Language Modelscited by 33
- 2023An In-depth Survey of Large Language Model-based Artificial Intelligence Agentscited by 31
- 2025FaithfulRAG: Fact-Level Conflict Modeling for Context-Faithful Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 28
- 2025BrokenMath: A Benchmark for Sycophancy in Theorem Proving with LLMscited by 27
- 2025Interaction Context Often Increases Sycophancy in LLMscited by 26
- 2026PersistBench: When Should Long-Term Memories Be Forgotten by LLMs?cited by 21
- 2026What Counts as AI Sycophancy? A Taxonomy and Expert Survey of a Fragmented Constructcited by 16
- 2026Ask don't tell: Reducing sycophancy in large language modelscited by 14
- 2025Sycophancy Mitigation Through Reinforcement Learning with Uncertainty-Aware Adaptive Reasoning Trajectoriescited by 11
- 2026BenchPreS: A Benchmark for Context-Aware Personalized Preference Selectivity of Persistent-Memory LLMscited by 10
- 2026Good Arguments Against the People Pleasers: How Reasoning Mitigates (Yet Masks) LLM Sycophancycited by 8
- 2026Diagnosing and Mitigating Sycophancy and Skepticism in LLM Causal Judgmentcited by 5
- 2026LegalGraphRAG: Multi-Agent Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Reliable Legal Reasoningcited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 12.
12 papers.
- 2026Graph Engineering in the Era of LLM Agents: From Individual Intelligence to System Intelligencecited by 3
- 2026The Memory Trust Gap: Capability-Dependent Failures in Persistent-Memory Agentscited by 1
- 2026MemCalib: Benchmarking and Optimizing Memory Use in LLM Agentscited by 1
- 2026A Benchmark and Diagnostic Study of Epistemic Admission in Shared Agent Memorycited by 1
- 2026Agents Don't Just Agree, They Remember: Benchmarking Persistent Sycophancy in Self-Improving Personal Agentscited by 0
- 2026Group Alignment-Induced Sycophancy: A Two-Sided Evaluation of Steerable Pluralistic Alignmentcited by 0
- 2026"You're Right, Let Me Fix It": How LLM Agents Damage Correct Work When Falsely Accusedcited by 0
- 2026UpliftMem: Learning Set-Level Uplift for Agent Memory Retrievalcited by 0
- 2026Memadapter: Counterfactual Adaptation Against Memory-induced Sycophancycited by 0
- 2026Defense-in-Depth for LLMs: Evaluating Memory Gates Against Activation-Induced and Memory-Induced Sycophancycited by 0
- 2026What to Admit and How to Present: Governing Persistent Memory in LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026AgentStripes: An Evidence-Graded Maturity Model for AI Agentscited by 0
- 2026AgentStripes: An Evidence-Graded Maturity Model for AI Agents13 Oct 2026
- 2026What to Admit and How to Present: Governing Persistent Memory in LLM Agents8 Oct 2026
- 2026Defense-in-Depth for LLMs: Evaluating Memory Gates Against Activation-Induced and Memory-Induced Sycophancy5 Oct 2026
- 2026Memadapter: Counterfactual Adaptation Against Memory-induced Sycophancy4 Oct 2026
- 2026UpliftMem: Learning Set-Level Uplift for Agent Memory Retrieval29 Sep 2026
- 2026"You're Right, Let Me Fix It": How LLM Agents Damage Correct Work When Falsely Accused26 Sep 2026
- 2026A Benchmark and Diagnostic Study of Epistemic Admission in Shared Agent Memory25 Sep 2026
- 2026MemCalib: Benchmarking and Optimizing Memory Use in LLM Agents21 Sep 2026
- 2026The Memory Trust Gap: Capability-Dependent Failures in Persistent-Memory Agents1 Sep 2026
- 2026Graph Engineering in the Era of LLM Agents: From Individual Intelligence to System Intelligence21 Aug 2026
- 2026Group Alignment-Induced Sycophancy: A Two-Sided Evaluation of Steerable Pluralistic Alignment12 Aug 2026
- 2026Agents Don't Just Agree, They Remember: Benchmarking Persistent Sycophancy in Self-Improving Personal Agents12 Jul 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025MemBench: Towards More Comprehensive Evaluation on the Memory of LLM-based Agents
- 2026MemGym: a Long-Horizon Memory Environment for LLM Agents
- 2026EvoMemBench: Benchmarking Agent Memory from a Self-Evolving Perspective
- 2026MemSecBench: Tracking Agent Memory Poisoning from Persistence to Consequence and Repair
- 2025How Memory Management Impacts LLM Agents: An Empirical Study of Experience-Following Behavior
- 2026PM-Bench: Evaluating Prospective Memory in LLM Agents
- 2026When to Forget: A Memory Governance Primitive
- 2026MemAudit: Auditing Long-Term Agent Memory via Hidden User-State Recovery