# How Do Large Language Models Judge Social Attraction? Evidence from Theory-Grounded Persona Ratings Across Multiple LLMs and Humans

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09717 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09717/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 24 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Whose Opinions Do Language Models Reflect?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17548/) (2023)
- [Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06899/) (2022)
- [Large language models that replace human participants can harmfully misportray and flatten identity groups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01908/) (2024)
- [MISGENDERED: Limits of Large Language Models in Understanding Pronouns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03950/) (2023)
- [Six Fallacies in Substituting Large Language Models for Human Participants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04470/) (2024)
- [Gender Bias in Decision-Making with Large Language Models: A Study of Relationship Conflicts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.11084/) (2024)
- [Who can we trust? LLM-as-a-jury for Comparative Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16610/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to perform subjective evaluations traditionally made by humans, yet their validity as social judges remains unclear. This paper examines whether LLMs can assess social attraction from theory-grounded persona profiles constructed from ten psychological and relational constructs and organized into three tiers: socially attractive, socially mixed, and socially unattractive. We examine LLM ratings in two studies and compare them with human judgments in a third study. In Study 1, 34 LLMs rated 12 profiles across three repeated runs. Although some models tended to give higher or lower ratings overall, they showed strong stability across runs, consistent three-tier ordering, and high agreement in relative profile ordering. Study 2 examined sensitivity to gender presentation using six matched name-and-pronoun profile pairs and a separate pronoun-only test with a gender-neutral name, finding no significant effects in either analysis. In Study 3, 198 human participants evaluated the six matched profiles from Study 2. Their ratings reproduced the three-tier structure and followed a profile ordering consistent with that of the LLMs. However, LLMs rated attractive profiles more positively and unattractive profiles more negatively than humans, while neither group showed a significant overall effect of gender presentation.