Safety
Carefully Considering Culture: Analyzing LLM Alignment in Single- and Multi-Cultural Settings using Cultural Consensus Theory
arXiv:2608.09937v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent work in NLP has probed large language models for their understanding of cultural norms across countries. However, this work typically considers d
arXiv:2608.09937v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent work in NLP has probed large language models for their understanding of cultural norms across countries. However, this work typically considers distributional patterns, ignoring group consensus or possible multicultural environments within a country. In this work, we leverage cultural consensus theory (CCT) from cultural anthropology to model such multidimensional nuance. Applying CCT to the World Values Survey (WVS) across 10 countries and 12 domains, we demonstrate that models frequently misrepresent cultural structures by either failing to form cohesive consensus or severely over-regularizing consensus. Through explicit representation of intra-group variance, CCT provides actionable diagnostics to evaluate when models reflect true human diversity versus algorithmic homogenization.
Related
- Korean Culture into LLM Alignment: Toward Cultural Coherence
- Mitigating Cross-Lingual Cultural Inconsistencies in LLMs via Consensus-Driven Preference Optimisation
- Progressing beyond Art Masterpieces or Touristic Cliches: how to assess your LLMs for cultural alignment?
Source: arXiv cs.CL | 2026-08-12