arXiv subjects

Pei-Luen Patrick Rau

Publications and source records attributed to Pei-Luen Patrick Rau.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Sycophancy Through a Five-Level AI Response Validation Framework

AI sycophancy, the tendency of AI systems to excessively agree with, flatter, or validate users, is an emerging concern in human-AI interaction. It is especially consequential in problem-sharing contexts, where users may seek both information and emotional validation. This paper conceptualizes AI sycophancy as excessive response validation and introduces a five-level AI Response Validation Framework (ARVF), measured using a six-item Perceived AI Sycophancy Scale (PASS). Across three phases, the study validated the framework with human participants through an online questionnaire, tested LLM-as-evaluators in answering PASS, and examined how ten contemporary LLMs generated and evaluated responses to real-world work and personal conflict scenarios. Results supported the intended progression of perceived sycophancy in ARVF and the reliability of PASS. Trust and perceived competence followed an inverted U-shaped pattern. LLM ratings reproduced the five-level structure but showed calibration differences from human ratings. Based on the LLM ratings, the ten contemporary LLMs were grouped according to their behavioral pattern. Text-based analysis provided further support on the linguistical structure for sycophantic responses generated by LLMs. Findings highlight AI sycophancy as a graded, context-sensitive interactional phenomenon.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

BiasLab: A Multilingual Dual-Framing Framework for LLM Bias Measurement, Applied to Workplace and HR Contexts

Background: Large language models (LLMs) harbor systematic biases that are particularly consequential in workplace and HR contexts, where their outputs increasingly influence hiring, job design, and organizational decisions. Existing bias-evaluation approaches remain methodologically fragmented, limiting practitioners' ability to assess deployment risks. Objective: This study introduces BiasLab, a multilingual dual-framing framework to quantify and compare directional output-level bias in LLMs, demonstrated across six workplace and HR-relevant topics. Methods: BiasLab combines mirrored affirmative and reverse prompt pairs, randomized wrapper perturbations, fixed-choice response constraints, and polarity-aligned scoring. Ten LLMs were evaluated across six topics (gender in leadership, employment gap candidates, age in hiring, remote versus office work, four-day versus five-day work weeks, and AI-assisted versus human-only hiring), spanning 12 languages and 30 iterations per framing direction, yielding 43,200 responses. Results: All ten models showed consistent directional preferences across every topic. A recurring asymmetric pattern emerged in which models rejected disfavored claims more strongly than they endorsed their opposites, a distinction invisible to single-frame designs. Conclusions: BiasLab provides a standardized, reproducible instrument for measuring directional preferences across models. Whether a preference constitutes bias in a fairness sense is topic-dependent: for protected attributes such as gender and age it maps onto equal-employment standards, whereas elsewhere it is better described as systematic preference. The framework lets organizations compare and vet models before adopting them for hiring.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2022

The Magic of Slow-to-Fast and Constant: Evaluating Time Perception of Progress Bars by Bayesian Model

Objective: We aimed to use adaptive psychophysics methods, which is a Bayesian Model, to measure users' time perception of various progress bar quantitatively. Background: Progress bar informs users about the status of ongoing processes. Progress bars frequently display nonuniform speed patterns, such as acceleration and deceleration. However, which progress bar is perceived faster remain unclear. Methods: We measured the point of subject equality (PSE) of the constant progress bar toward four different 5-second progress bars with a non-constant speed. To measure PSE, in each trial, a constant progress bar and a non-constant progress bar were presented to participants. Participants needed to judge which one is shorter. Based on their choice, the model generated the time duration of constant progress bar in next trial. After 40 trials for each non-constant progress bar, the PSE was calculated by the model. Eye tracking was recorded during the experiment.Results: Our results show that the constant progress bar and speed-up progress bar are perceived to be faster. The anchoring effect fits the results of our study, indicating that the final part of the progress bar is more important for time perception. Moreover, the eye-tracking results indicate that the progress bar is perceived to be slower is related to the overload of cognitive resources.Conclusion: The constant progress bar and speed-up progress bar are perceived as the quickest. Application: The results suggest that UX design can use constant or speed-up progress bar, in order to improve user experience in waiting.

cs.HC↗