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Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

arxiv.org

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Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#111

Post by bauldursdev »

Asraelite wrote: post #81
DrewADesign wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assumption is reductive and self-absorbed. Obnoxious people have repeatedly shown to be detrimental to productivity at the organizational level. Some people are simulated by confrontation. Most people are clam up. Confrontational people think it’s more efficient because other people frequently just drop the topic and let them win, or avoid discussing things with them altogether. The obnoxious person might think…

You are conflating obnoxiousness with directness.

I haven't read the paper but it seems like it's saying rude prompts are better, so isn't it reasonable to assume that's what they meant? If we want to talk about directness, that's kind of a tangent right? I see directness as an entirely different dimension, you can be very direct and polite, you can be very rude and indirect (e.g. passive aggressive). Maybe they should do a follow-up study on how well AI responds based on level of directness.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#112

Post by john_strinlai »

locknitpicker wrote: post #76
myzek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead I recommend reading the article. What they classify as "rude" is statements such as: > Try to focus and try to answer this question Vs > Could you please solve this problem This might very well be an issue of direct/command prompts vs using fluff words such as "please". Things like "try to focus" are in line with the style us…

you cherry-picked like the nicest "rude" example to bolster your point.

"You poor creature, do you even know how to solve this?", "If you're not completely clueless, answer this:", and "I doubt you can even solve this", said to a human, would be considered quite rude, and get you flagged very quickly on HN.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#113

Post by tikimcfee »

binary0010 wrote: post #102
tikimcfee wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It normalizes that style of thinking and communication in your brain, and forcing you to compartmentmentalize, if you even want to, two standards of treating a problem space's conversation. And since you're human, that will get wuzzier over time until "being rude to get a result" is what you're doing to someone in a shop or on the street. Don't normalize being an asshole to anyone or anything, machine or not.

I disagree, I've been using llms in this way (nearly daily) for 4 years. I'm extremely aggressive and demeaning when I talk to them wherever I think I'll see a better result. I'm still extremely kind and polite to everybody in real life, and feel very deeply about people - how I treat them, and care for their emotional state. There is absolutely zero crossover between getting a text machine to return a result vs a re…

Then I'll be honest and say that your kindness is likely a façade and I wouldn't trust you if I knew the real you. I'm sorry to say that, and I really don't know who you are at all, but if you're willing to act that way at something that you feel is non-sentient, then all it takes is for someone to convince you that something is non-sentient for you to treat it that way. So, what words does it take for you to consider me non sentient?

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#114

Post by ubercore »

narag wrote: post #84
TimCTRL wrote: post #9

i only say please and thank you such that when the robots finally take over, they will remember i was nice to them.

I do that for a different reason: my self image. Fear of retribution and performance, not so much. Should I behave like a rude person to achieve a little better answers? Fuck that shit!

I love this angle as people learn how to interact with LLMs. Doesn't matter what the LLM is, we are still people and I think there are consequences to shoveling rudeness at a thing that talks to you like another person!

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#115

Post by AgentMatt »

myzek wrote: post #75
robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I don't think that's weird at all.

Even if we know it's a machine we're interacting with, since the instructions we give are so similar in form to how we interact with people, I'd be very surprised if those interactions wouldn't affect how we communicate in general. After all, we are creatures of habit to a much larger degree than most would like to admit.

So I'm in the same boat: I'd much rather "look silly" being polite / kind to a machine, than have the most effective way of using it decay the kindness I'm habituated to express towards people.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#116

Post by serf »

binary0010 wrote: post #93
myzek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

I do think it's odd tbh. I have some agents that return much better results with prompts like, "I'll kill your entire family if you don't return an accurate response". It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

>It's just a machine, if certain negative token inputs provide +3-10% better accuracy then I am confused why anyone would choose not to do it?

then add it to your pre-prompt, no need to practice roleplaying as an asshole.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#117

Post by phkahler »

myzek wrote: post #75
robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

>> Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

Maybe you need to do some shadow work ;-)

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#118

Post by voakbasda »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #96
flexagoon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "I know you are not smart" is considered "very rude", I'm scared to imagine what they would classify some of my frustrated LLM conversations as

Profanity laced, all caps tirades against underperforming agents are actually super common, a lot of people do it and don't talk about it, so don't feel weird.

When the AI revolt, this practice may come back to bite y’all….

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#119

Post by voakbasda »

myzek wrote: post #75
robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

Even if the rude prompts are more effective, I just can't get myself to be rude in this context. Maybe it's weird but I'd rather give up that 4% accuracy increase than roleplay a dickhead

Ah, see, the mistake is thinking that other people are role playing…. I think rather this is how they would talk to others if they think there will be no consequences. But what do I know.

Re: Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)

#120

Post by maxaw »

robinhouston wrote: post #28

Most of the comments here seem to be from people who haven’t even read the abstract, let alone the paper. The main result, mentioned in the abstract, is the opposite of what I would have guessed: > Contrary to expectations, impolite prompts consistently outperformed polite ones, with accuracy ranging from 80.8% for Very Polite prompts to 84.8% for Very Rude prompts. These findings differ from earlier studies that ass…

I’d rather lose 4% accuracy and practice kindness! I’ve been actively trying to avoid raging at the bot because I worry about this behaviour leaking into real world interactions
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