Synthetic Consumer Lab Synthetic Consumer Lab Try the demo
TR EN
Article — 5 min read

Enhancing LLM Decision-Making with Factor Profiles and Analogical Reasoning (DEFINE)

Rational decision-making by LLMs in financial scenarios under uncertainty: improving decision accuracy and transparency through factor profiles and historical analogy.

Research Questions

  1. How can LLMs make more rational decisions in complex real-world scenarios involving uncertainty (e.g., corporate earnings calls)?
  2. How can uncertainty be quantified using factor profiles?
  3. How can analogy-based reasoning, grounded in historical similarities, improve and clarify LLM decision-making?

Results

  • The DEFINE framework achieved higher accuracy and F1 scores compared to alternative methods (Acc 29.6%, F1 23.7%).
  • Summarizing long transcripts into structured factor profiles improved decision accuracy.
  • Decisions were more evenly distributed across five categories (Strong Buy → Strong Sell), with particularly strong performance on “Strong Buy” predictions.
  • Training with cross-sector data outperformed training on a single sector or a single company.
  • The analogy approach correctly transferred insights from similar historical cases 69% of the time.

Findings

  • Performance:

    • DEFINE outperformed DeLLMa and classical LLM + Chain-of-Thought approaches.
  • Efficiency Through Structure:

    • Using structured factor summaries (15 factors across 3 groups) yielded higher accuracy than processing full-length transcripts.
  • Balanced Decision Distribution:

    • Model decisions did not cluster around “Buy”; outputs were more balanced across all five categories.
  • Analogy-Based Reasoning:

    • By using KL divergence to identify similar past examples, 69% of decisions aligned with the closest historical analogue.
  • Unexpected Insights:

    • In some cases, the model issued “Buy” recommendations even at low positive probability levels—reflecting rational paradoxes inherent in investment decision-making.
  • LLM Models: 5

  • Synthetic Data: 1

  • Method: 5

  • Speed: 3

  • Ethics: 1

  • Accuracy: 5

  • Demographics: 0

If you would like to explore this research in more detail, click here to read the full paper.

Read the full text ← All articles
Design lab
Theme
Accent color
Web animation
Try the animation on the homepage hero by moving your mouse over it.