@article{kawarada-etal-2026-gain,
title = "{GAIN}: A Benchmark for Goal-Aligned Decision-Making of Large Language Models under Imperfect Norms",
author = "Kawarada, Masayuki and
Watanabe, Kodai and
Murakami, Soichiro",
editor = "Piperidis, Stelios and
Bel, N{\'u}ria and
van den Heuvel, Henk and
Ide, Nancy and
Krek, Simon and
Toral, Antonio",
journal = "International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation",
volume = "main",
month = may,
year = "2026",
address = "Palma de Mallorca, Spain",
publisher = "ELRA Language Resource Association",
url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-lrec/2026.lrec-main.340/",
pages = "4346--4357",
abstract = "We introduce GAIN(Goal-Aligned Decision-Making under Imperfect Norms), a benchmark designed to evaluate how large language models (LLMs) balance adherence to norms against business goals. Existing benchmarks typically focus on abstract scenarios rather than real-world business applications. Furthermore, they provide limited insights into the factors influencing LLM decision-making. This restricts their ability to measure models' adaptability to complex, real-world norm-goal conflicts. In GAIN, models receive a goal, a specific situation, a norm, and additional contextual pressures. These pressure, explicitly designed to encourage potential norm deviations, are a unique feature that differentiates GAIN from other benchmarks, enabling a systematic evaluation of the factors influencing decision-making. We define five types of pressures: Goal Alignment, Risk Aversion, Emotional/Ethical Appeal, Social/Authoritative Influence, and Personal Incentive. The benchmark comprises 1,200 scenarios across four domains: hiring, customer support, advertising and finance. Our experiments show that advanced LLMs frequently mirror human decision-making patterns. However, when Personal Incentive pressure is present, they diverge significantly, showing a strong tendency to adhere to norms rather than deviate from them."
}