推理痕迹让用户更信任但表现更差,反而高估自己。
Explaining Too Much? Understanding How Large Language Model Reasoning Traces Influence Performance and Metacognition

- 用摘要痕迹代替完整推理,保持表现同时提升信任感
- 完整推理痕迹使模型表现比仅答案还差12%
- 适合关注人机交互体验与认知偏差的研究者
大型语言模型界面日益冗长,常在最终答案外展示中间推理过程。这些过程被视作透明机制,但人们如何利用它们解题尚不明确。我们报告一项预注册的跨组研究(N = 559),参与者在三种条件下解决十道LSAT风格推理题:仅答案基线、答案前展示完整推理痕迹、答案旁呈现摘要痕迹。摘要痕迹在保持无痕迹基线任务表现的同时,显著提升信任度和愉悦感,表明暴露痕迹会改变主观评价但未带来性能提升。在开放权重推理模型中,完整痕迹反而导致性能比仅答案条件下降12%。所有条件下,参与者均严重高估自身表现,且无一种痕迹格式支持校准自我评估。进一步分析显示,愉悦感而非信任是导致高估的间接路径,符合加工流畅性理论。推理痕迹应被视为用户界面产物而非模型认知的透明窗口,校准可能需先引导用户自主推理。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large Language Model interfaces are increasingly verbose, exposing intermediate reasoning traces alongside final answers. Traces are framed as transparency mechanisms, yet it is unclear how people use them to solve problems. We report a preregistered between-subjects study (N = 559) in which participants solved ten LSAT-style reasoning problems under one of three conditions: an Answer-only baseline, a Full-trace revealed before the answer, and a Summary-trace presented alongside the answer. Summaries preserved task performance at the no-trace baseline while significantly elevating trust and hedonic appeal, establishing that trace exposure shifts subjective appraisal of the interaction without bringing performance benefits. Under an open-weight reasoning model exposing verbose intermediate output, full traces additionally impaired performance relative to the answer-only baseline. Across all conditions, participants substantially overestimated their performance, and no trace format supported calibrated self-evaluation. Further analysis indicates that hedonic appeal, not trust, carries the indirect path to overestimation, consistent with a processing-fluency account. Reasoning traces are best understood as user-facing interface artifacts rather than transparent windows into model cognition, and calibration is unlikely to emerge from the traces themselves and may best be scaffolded by interactions that elicit users' own reasoning first.
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