Exploring the Impact of Language Switching on Personality Traits in LLMs

Jacopo Amidei, Jose Gregorio Ferreira De Sá, Rubén Nieto Luna, Andreas Kaltenbrunner


Abstract
This paper investigates the extent to which LLMs align with humans when personality shifts are associated with language changes. Based on three experiments, that focus on GPT-4o and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQR-A), our initial results reveal a weak yet significant variation in GPT-4o’s personality across languages, indicating that some stem from a language-switching effect rather than translation. Further analysis across five English-speaking countries shows that GPT-4o, leveraging stereotypes, reflects distinct country-specific personality traits.
Anthology ID:
2025.coling-main.162
Volume:
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Owen Rambow, Leo Wanner, Marianna Apidianaki, Hend Al-Khalifa, Barbara Di Eugenio, Steven Schockaert
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
2370–2378
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.162/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Jacopo Amidei, Jose Gregorio Ferreira De Sá, Rubén Nieto Luna, and Andreas Kaltenbrunner. 2025. Exploring the Impact of Language Switching on Personality Traits in LLMs. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 2370–2378, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Exploring the Impact of Language Switching on Personality Traits in LLMs (Amidei et al., COLING 2025)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.162.pdf