Interaction Context Often Increases Sycophancy in LLMs

We investigate how the presence and type of interaction context shapes sycophancy in LLMs. While real-world interactions allow models to mirror a user’s values, preferences, and self-image, prior work often studies sycophancy in zero-shot settings devoid of context. Using two weeks of interaction context from 38 users, we evaluate two forms of sycophancy: (1) agreement sycophancy — the tendency of models to produce overly affirmative responses, and (2) perspective sycophancy — the extent to which models reflect a user’s viewpoint. Agreement sycophancy tends to increase with the presence of user context, though model behavior varies based on the context type. User memory profiles are associated with the largest…