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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)

#51

Post by graemep »

jcattle wrote: post #44
graemep wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it worth getting worse results for that reason? From the article: "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 associated rudeness with poorer outcomes, suggesting that newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation. " I am not polite…

I guess it's about habit. In the end you are communicating. If I get into the habit of being rude while communicating with a machine, I would be afraid of this habit spilling over to my communication with other humans.

What about the risk that talking to a machine as though its human leads to thinking of it has human? That leads down a lot of dangerous paths.

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

#54

Post by miroljub »

DrewADesign wrote: post #50
miroljub wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 associated rudeness with poorer outcomes, suggesting that newer LLMs may respond differently to tonal variation. The expectation is naive. Even when communicating with humans, you get a better outcom…

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…

> Your assumption is reductive and self-absorbed.

This is a good example of productive direct communication without sugarcoating. I find it much more productive, for both human and LLM interaction, than something like:

"I wonder if that view might be oversimplifying a complex situation and focusing mostly on how it relates to you. There may be some other angles worth exploring."

or

"I think there might be a bit more nuance to consider here, and it could help to look at it from a wider perspective beyond personal experience."

> Obnoxious people have repeatedly shown to be detrimental to productivity at the organizational level.

You confused directness and openness with obnoxiousness here. The issue with many orgs is they foster fakeness and beating around the bush in an attempt not to offend the easily offended people. This trend also infected the companies from countries with way more direct culture in an attempt to accommodate people from indirect cultures.

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

#55

Post by DrewADesign »

miroljub wrote: post #54
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…

> Your assumption is reductive and self-absorbed. This is a good example of productive direct communication without sugarcoating. I find it much more productive, for both human and LLM interaction, than something like: "I wonder if that view might be oversimplifying a complex situation and focusing mostly on how it relates to you. There may be some other angles worth exploring." or "I think there might be a bit more…

No… the way I said it was actually deliberately obnoxious— the appropriate direct workplace response would be: “that seems oversimplified. I disagree. Here’s why:”

Calling you self-absorbed added nothing of substance to the comment. It was an assumption about your mental state and a judgement of your intent based on that. There was no factual analysis or actionable insight. It was just one person explicitly stating that they feel the other person is dumber or maybe less mentally disciplined. It turned valid, direct feedback into an insult. It is exactly the type of thing that alienates people for no benefit beyond pumping up the speaker’s ego.

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

#56

Post by Foobar8568 »

ilitirit wrote: post #36

I got downvoted for asking a related question recently, but I also don't think people really understood what I was asking - I'm not trying to anthropomorphise LLMs to that extent. Basically, if you tell a model "You're an absolute moron, of course that's wrong!", will it give better or worse results? How much of that response will it absorb into its persona (like some humans tend to do)? Will it try to give "safer" r…

Based on my own experience with vibe coding difficult stuff outside of my expertise, I definitely got better outcome with Fuck you, shut up and do it, ffs, you are moron.

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

#58

Post by tgv »

not2b wrote: post #57

If the result is statistically significant, it just barely makes it. 84.8% isn't that much higher than 80.8% and they had only 250 prompts, if I'm reading this right.

In a field where progress is measured in tenths of percent points, that's not true. Think of it this way: the error rate drops from 19% to 15%, or from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6.

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

#59

Post by zmmmmm »

It would be interesting to explore if the results hold up on long range tasks - this study looks like it was based on one-shot answers. With people also you can see short term improved performance from rude interactions, but it will cause ongoing lasting adverse behavior. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we saw the same issues with LLMs.

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

#60

Post by layman51 »

theanonymousone wrote: post #8

I have always said please and thank you to LLMs, not to increase accuracy or because I'm stupid. I believe it is more about me than about the LLM, and this is anyway a habit I don't want to lose.

I also remember reading a long time ago someone who wrote that they wanted to be polite to an LLM because after they prompted it to learn about whether politeness was good for improving accuracy of responses, they got a message that led them to conclude that politeness could probably help. It seems a bit odd then because I have heard so much about how people use LLMs' responses about themselves to learn about LLMs themselves, but that seems like it is a suspicious approach.
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