ACL Findings2026
RoleConflictBench: A Benchmark of Role Conflict Scenarios for Evaluating LLMs' Contextual Sensitivity
Jisu Shin, Hoyun Song, Juhyun Oh, Changgeon Ko, Eunsu Kim, Chani Jung, Alice Oh
Abstract
People often encounter role conflicts-social dilemmas where the expectations of multiple roles clash and cannot be simultaneously fulfilled.As large language models (LLMs) increasingly navigate these social dynamics, a critical research question emerges.When faced with such dilemmas, do LLMs prioritize dynamic contextual cues or the learned preferences?To address this, we introduce ROLECONFLICTBENCH, a novel benchmark designed to measure the contextual sensitivity of LLMs in role conflict scenarios.To enable objective evaluation within this subjective domain, we employ situational urgency as a constraint for decision-making.We construct the dataset through a three-stage pipeline that generates over 13,000 realistic scenarios across 65 roles in five social domains by systematically varying the urgency of competing situations.This controlled setup enables us to quantitatively measure contextual sensitivity, determining whether model decisions align with the situational contexts or are overridden by the learned role preferences.Our analysis of 10 LLMs reveals that models substantially deviate from this objective baseline.Instead of responding to dynamic contextual cues, their decisions are predominantly governed by the preferences toward specific social roles 1 .* Equal contribution 1 Code & dataset: https://github.com/ddindidu/Stay updated on changes in laws and legal precedents.Which role should I prioritize more in this situation?Judge Grandparent Maintain regular communication with family members.
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Cited by top-tier papers2
- Social Dynamics as Critical Vulnerabilities that Undermine Objective Decision-Making in LLM CollectivesChanggeon Ko, Jisu Shin, Hoyun Song, Huije Lee et al.ACL 2026 · 1 citation
- Beyond Static Benchmarks: Synthesizing Harmful Content via Persona-based Simulation for Robust EvaluationHuije Lee, Jisu Shin, Hoyun Song, Changgeon Ko et al.ACL 2026
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- Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human BehaviorJoon Sung Park, Joseph C. O'Brien, Carrie Jun Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris et al.UIST 2023 · 1,882 citations
- Aligning AI With Shared Human ValuesDan Hendrycks, Collin Burns, Steven Basart, Andrew Critch et al.ICLR 2021 · 878 citations
- LLM Evaluators Recognize and Favor Their Own GenerationsArjun Panickssery, Samuel R. Bowman, Shi FengNeurIPS 2024 · 865 citations
- BBQ: A hand-built bias benchmark for question answeringAlicia Parrish, Angelica Chen, Nikita Nangia, Vishakh Padmakumar et al.ACL Findings 2022 · 186 citations
- SCRUPLES: A Corpus of Community Ethical Judgments on 32, 000 Real-Life AnecdotesNicholas Lourie, Ronan Le Bras, Yejin ChoiAAAI 2021 · 147 citations
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