@inproceedings{chu-etal-2026-towards,
title = "Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating {LLM}s Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization",
author = "Chu, Xu and
Wang, Guanyu and
Tan, Zhijie and
Chen, Xinrong and
Li, Ziyu and
Mo, Tong and
Li, Weiping",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.219/",
pages = "4790--4805",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from order bias, where their performance is affected by the arrangement order of input elements. This unfairness limits the model{'}s applications in scenarios such as in-context learning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Recent studies attempt to obtain optimal or suboptimal arrangements based on statistical results or using dataset-based search, but these methods increase inference overhead while leaving the model{'}s inherent order bias unresolved. Other studies mitigate order sensitivity through supervised fine-tuning using augmented training sets with multiple order variants, but often at the cost of accuracy, trapping the model in consistent yet incorrect hallucinations. In this paper, we propose \textbf{D}ual \textbf{G}roup \textbf{A}dvantage \textbf{O}ptimization (\textbf{DGAO}), which aims to improve model accuracy and order stability simultaneously. DGAO calculates and balances intra-group relative accuracy advantage and inter-group relative stability advantage, rewarding the policy model for generating order-stable and correct outputs while penalizing order-sensitive or incorrect responses. This marks the first time reinforcement learning has been used to mitigate LLMs' order sensitivity. We also propose two new metrics, Consistency Rate and Overconfidence Rate, to reveal the pseudo-stability of previous methods and guide more comprehensive evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DGAO achieves superior order fairness while improving performance on RAG, mathematical reasoning, and classification tasks. Our code is available at: \url{https://anonymous.4open.science/r/DGAO-A481/}"
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<abstract>Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from order bias, where their performance is affected by the arrangement order of input elements. This unfairness limits the model’s applications in scenarios such as in-context learning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Recent studies attempt to obtain optimal or suboptimal arrangements based on statistical results or using dataset-based search, but these methods increase inference overhead while leaving the model’s inherent order bias unresolved. Other studies mitigate order sensitivity through supervised fine-tuning using augmented training sets with multiple order variants, but often at the cost of accuracy, trapping the model in consistent yet incorrect hallucinations. In this paper, we propose Dual Group Advantage Optimization (DGAO), which aims to improve model accuracy and order stability simultaneously. DGAO calculates and balances intra-group relative accuracy advantage and inter-group relative stability advantage, rewarding the policy model for generating order-stable and correct outputs while penalizing order-sensitive or incorrect responses. This marks the first time reinforcement learning has been used to mitigate LLMs’ order sensitivity. We also propose two new metrics, Consistency Rate and Overconfidence Rate, to reveal the pseudo-stability of previous methods and guide more comprehensive evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DGAO achieves superior order fairness while improving performance on RAG, mathematical reasoning, and classification tasks. Our code is available at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/DGAO-A481/</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization
%A Chu, Xu
%A Wang, Guanyu
%A Tan, Zhijie
%A Chen, Xinrong
%A Li, Ziyu
%A Mo, Tong
%A Li, Weiping
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F chu-etal-2026-towards
%X Large Language Models (LLMs) suffer from order bias, where their performance is affected by the arrangement order of input elements. This unfairness limits the model’s applications in scenarios such as in-context learning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Recent studies attempt to obtain optimal or suboptimal arrangements based on statistical results or using dataset-based search, but these methods increase inference overhead while leaving the model’s inherent order bias unresolved. Other studies mitigate order sensitivity through supervised fine-tuning using augmented training sets with multiple order variants, but often at the cost of accuracy, trapping the model in consistent yet incorrect hallucinations. In this paper, we propose Dual Group Advantage Optimization (DGAO), which aims to improve model accuracy and order stability simultaneously. DGAO calculates and balances intra-group relative accuracy advantage and inter-group relative stability advantage, rewarding the policy model for generating order-stable and correct outputs while penalizing order-sensitive or incorrect responses. This marks the first time reinforcement learning has been used to mitigate LLMs’ order sensitivity. We also propose two new metrics, Consistency Rate and Overconfidence Rate, to reveal the pseudo-stability of previous methods and guide more comprehensive evaluation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DGAO achieves superior order fairness while improving performance on RAG, mathematical reasoning, and classification tasks. Our code is available at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/DGAO-A481/
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.219/
%P 4790-4805
Markdown (Informal)
[Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.219/) (Chu et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Xu Chu, Guanyu Wang, Zhijie Tan, Xinrong Chen, Ziyu Li, Tong Mo, and Weiping Li. 2026. Towards Order Fairness: Mitigating LLMs Order Sensitivity through Dual Group Advantage Optimization. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 4790–4805, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.