Facet-Informed Prompting for LLM-Based Personality Assessment: Error-Guided Exemplar Selection and Hierarchical Prediction

Rasiq Hussain, Juhi Shah, Joshua Oltmanns, Mehak Gupta


Abstract
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied to automatic personality assessment, yet most prior work relies on coarse binary labels and direct domain-level predictions, limiting interpretability and ignoring the hierarchical facet structure of personality. In this study, we implement a structured prompting approach with three complementary objectives: direct domain-level prediction, fine-grained facet-level prediction, and domain-level prediction informed by facet outputs. All predictions use a five-level ordinal label scheme, capturing a continuum from very low to very high trait expression. Across all prompt types, we adopt an error-guided self-refinement procedure using in-context learning (ICL) to guide the model toward more accurate predictions. Zero-shot prompts assess baseline performance, while one-shot prompts incorporate a single demonstration example selected through the refinement procedure. Our framework evaluates both domain- and facet-level predictions, enabling examination of how prediction granularity and targeted exemplar selection influence LLM inference. By combining hierarchical domain-facet relationships with structured prompting and refinement, this work aims to provide a systematic approach for interpretable and principled LLM-based personality assessment from long-form life narratives.
Anthology ID:
2026.clpsych-1.17
Volume:
Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2026)
Month:
July
Year:
2026
Address:
San Diego, California, USA
Editors:
Aya Zirikly, Kfir Bar, Sean MacAvaney, Molly Ireland, Yaakov Ophir, Dana Atzil-Slonim, Vasudha Varadarajan, Steven Bedrick, Bart Desmet
Venues:
CLPsych | WS
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Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
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Pages:
221–237
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URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.clpsych-1.17/
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Cite (ACL):
Rasiq Hussain, Juhi Shah, Joshua Oltmanns, and Mehak Gupta. 2026. Facet-Informed Prompting for LLM-Based Personality Assessment: Error-Guided Exemplar Selection and Hierarchical Prediction. In Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych 2026), pages 221–237, San Diego, California, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Facet-Informed Prompting for LLM-Based Personality Assessment: Error-Guided Exemplar Selection and Hierarchical Prediction (Hussain et al., CLPsych 2026)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.clpsych-1.17.pdf