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Two Tales of Persona in LLMs: A Survey of Role-Playing and Personalization

Research Questions

  1. How can persona usage in LLMs be systematically classified?
  2. Is a persona assigned to the LLM (Role-Playing), or is it applied to the user (Personalization)?
  3. How can personality assessment be conducted for LLMs?

Results

  • The fundamental distinction in persona research is between Role-Playing (the LLM adopting a persona) and Personalization (the system adapting to the user’s persona).
  • Role-Playing is used to improve task performance in domains such as software development, gaming, and medicine.
  • Personalization focuses on meeting user needs in areas like search, recommendations, education, and healthcare.
  • Evaluation typically relies on psychometric tests such as Big Five (BFI) or MBTI, though LLMs exhibit limited personality consistency.

Findings

  • Role-Playing:

    • Applied in single-agent (e.g., Voyager in gaming) or multi-agent scenarios (software development, medical workflows).
    • In multi-agent settings, dynamics such as voluntary cooperation, coordination, and even destructive behaviors (toxicity, jailbreaking) can emerge.

  • Personalization:

    • Generates tailored recommendations and experiences by incorporating user history and contextual information.

  • Application Overlap:

    • In some cases, both role-playing and personalization may be used together, though their objectives differ.

  • Risks:

    • Persona assignment can introduce bias and create safety vulnerabilities.

  • Assessment:

    • Although LLMs often mimic intended persona traits, the generalizability of human psychometric tests to LLMs remains questionable.

  • LLM Models: 5

  • Synthetic Data: 3

  • Method: 4

  • Speed: 1

  • Ethics: 4

  • Accuracy: 2

  • Demographics: 2

If you would like to access more detailed information about this article, click here to view the supplementary material.

5 min read

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