ToMAP: Training Opponent-Aware LLM Persuaders with Theory of Mind

Large language models (LLMs) have shown promising potential in persuasion, but existing works on training LLM persuaders are still preliminary. Notably, while humans are skilled in modeling their opponent's thoughts and opinions proactively and dynamically, current LLMs struggle with such Theory of Mind (ToM) reasoning, resulting in limited diversity and opponent awareness. To address this limitation, we introduce Theory of Mind Augmented Persuader ( ToMAP ), a novel approach for building more flexible persuader agents by incorporating two theory of mind modules that enhance the persuader's awareness and analysis of the opponent's mental state. Specifically, we instruct the persuader to consider possible objections to the target claim, and train a module to predict the opponent’s agreement level on these objections. Experiments show that the ToMAP persuader, while containing only 3B parameters, outperforms much larger baselines, like GPT-4o, with a relative gain of 39.4% across multiple persuadee models and diverse corpora. Notably, ToMAP exhibits complex reasoning chains and reduced repetition during training, which leads to more diverse and effective arguments. These results underscore ToMAP's potential for developing more persuasive language agents. Code is available at: https://github.com/ulab-uiuc/ToMAP.