arXiv:2608.14161cs.AI2026-08

通过分析模型推理过程,揭示隐性思维模式如何导致偏见输出。

BiasTrace: Linking Reasoning Behaviours to Biased Outputs in LLMs

论文配图:BiasTrace: Linking Reasoning Behaviours to Biased Outputs in LLMs
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 设计标注体系,追踪模型推理中的偏见行为
  • 发现偏见多源于细微推理缺陷而非明显歧视语言
  • 可用来实时干预,提升大模型公平性

大型语言模型在高风险场景中会表现出社会偏见,产生不准确甚至歧视性的推断。现有研究多关注模型最终输出的偏见,对生成偏见的内在机制理解不足。近期大模型推理能力的发展为探究偏见提供了新视角,但推理过程与偏见之间的关联仍不清楚。当前方法主要关注最终答案正确性或显性偏见语言,忽视了推理中可能隐含导致偏见的行为。本文提出 BiasTrace,一种用于标注模型推理轨迹中推理行为并关联偏见输出的标注方案。BiasTrace捕捉特定于偏见的行为(如无依据的人口假设)以及可能间接引发偏见的通用推理模式(如过度思考)。我们基于验证过的 LLM-as-a-judge 方法,在敏感语境下对推理轨迹进行规模化标注,构建了一个大规模标注数据集。分析表明,偏见输出往往源于微妙的推理行为,而非显性偏见语言;且推理级标注显著提升偏见检测效果。进一步实验显示,这些标注行为可用于推理时的偏见缓解。结果强调需考察更广泛的推理模式以深入理解大模型中的偏见。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

LLMs exhibit social biases that can produce inaccurate and discriminatory inferences, posing risks in high-stakes applications. While prior work has made progress in measuring and mitigating bias, it largely focuses on final outputs of models, with limited understanding of the mechanisms that produce biased outcomes. Recent advances in LLM reasoning offers a new lens for investigating bias, yet the link between reasoning and bias remains poorly understood. Existing approaches focus primarily on final answer correctness or explicitly biased language, overlooking different behaviours in reasoning that can drive biased outcomes. We introduce BiasTrace, an annotation scheme for labelling reasoning behaviours in model-generated traces and linking them to biased outcomes. BiasTrace captures bias-specific behaviours (e.g., unsupported demographic assumptions) as well as general reasoning patterns that may implicitly contribute to bias (e.g. overthinking). We apply BiasTrace to reasoning traces in bias-sensitive contexts, scaled using validated LLM-as-a-judge methods, producing a large annotated dataset. Our analysis shows that biased outputs often stem from subtle reasoning behaviours rather than explicitly biased language, and that reasoning-level annotations improve bias detection. We further show that BiasTrace behaviours can be exploited for inference-time mitigation. These findings underscore the importance of examining a broader range of reasoning patterns to better understand bias in LLMs.

模型偏见推理分析公平性

Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。