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The Influence of Prompt Politeness on LLM Performance (arxiv.org)
17 points by blululu on Feb 25, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: They tested how polite or rude wording in prompts changes AI answers on tasks in English, Chinese, and Japanese. Rude prompts scored worse, but extra politeness didn't help, and the best politeness level differed by language.

Abstract · Should We Respect LLMs? A Cross-Lingual Study on the Influence of Prompt Politeness on LLM Performance

We investigate the impact of politeness levels in prompts on the performance of large language models (LLMs). Polite language in human communications often garners more compliance and effectiveness, while rudeness can cause aversion, impacting response quality. We consider that LLMs mirror human communication traits, suggesting they align with human cultural norms. We assess the impact of politeness in prompts on LLMs across English, Chinese, and Japanese tasks. We observed that impolite prompts often result in poor performance, but overly polite language does not guarantee better outcomes. The best politeness level is different according to the language. This phenomenon suggests that LLMs not only reflect human behavior but are also influenced by language, particularly in different cultural contexts. Our findings highlight the need to factor in politeness for cross-cultural natural language processing and LLM usage.

Ziqi Yin, Hao Wang, Kaito Horio, Daisuke Kawahara, Satoshi Sekine
arXiv:2402.14531 · cs.CL · submitted Feb 22, 2024 · updated Oct 14, 2024
abstract · pdf · SICon 2024

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Also discussed: Apr 2025 (48 points, 105 comments) · Feb 2024 (1 point, 2 comments)