@inproceedings{kim-etal-2026-machine,
    title = "Machine Behavior in Relational Moral Dilemmas: Moral Rightness, Predicted Human Behavior, and Model Decisions",
    author = "Kim, Jiseon  and
      Kwon, Jea  and
      Vecchietti, Luiz Felipe  and
      Dong, Wenchao  and
      Kim, Jaehong  and
      Cha, Meeyoung",
    editor = "Liakata, Maria  and
      Moreira, Viviane P.  and
      Zhang, Jiajun  and
      Jurgens, David",
    booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, United States",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.findings-acl.1547/",
    pages = "30938--30955",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
    abstract = "Human moral judgment is context-dependent and changes based on interpersonal relationships. As large language models (LLMs) increasingly serve as decision-support systems, it is critical to understand if they encode these social nuances. We characterize LLM behavior using the Whistleblower{'}s Dilemma, systematically varying two experimental factors: crime severity and relational closeness. Our study compares three evaluative perspectives: (1) moral rightness (general prescriptive norms), (2) predictive human behavior (how models expect people to navigate social situations), and (3) models' own decision-making. By analyzing the reasoning processes, we find a clear cross-perspective divergence: moral rightness remains consistently fairness-oriented, while predicted human behavior shifts with relational context toward loyalty. Crucially, the model decisions mirror moral rightness judgments, rather than their behavioral predictions. This cross-perspective inconsistency suggests that LLM decision-making favors abstract rules over the social sensitivity found in their internal modeling, potentially producing conflicting expectations in real-world deployments."
}