AIBearisharXiv – CS AI · Apr 157/10
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Narrative over Numbers: The Identifiable Victim Effect and its Amplification Under Alignment and Reasoning in Large Language Models
Researchers tested whether large language models exhibit the Identifiable Victim Effect (IVE)—a well-documented cognitive bias where people prioritize helping a specific individual over a larger group facing equal hardship. Across 51,955 API trials spanning 16 frontier models, instruction-tuned LLMs showed amplified IVE compared to humans, while reasoning-specialized models inverted the effect, raising critical concerns about AI deployment in humanitarian decision-making.
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