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The Cartographer
Caught in the Story: Narrative Captivity in Multi-turn LLMs Conversation
September 03, 2026 Β· Grace Period Β· π EMNLP 2026 findings
Authors
Yuhe Wu, Guangyu Wang, Yujie Chen, Jiatong Zhang, Yuran Chen, Yutong Zhang, Xiyin Cheng, Wenpeng Cao, Zhuang Liu, Guang Zhang
arXiv ID
2609.03407
Category
cs.AI: Artificial Intelligence
Citations
0
Venue
EMNLP 2026 findings
Abstract
People increasingly turn to large language models (LLMs) for everyday advice, making ethically charged interpersonal problems a practical moral-advisory context. Most prior work has studied this context through single-turn judgments or pressure-laden rebuttals, assumptions that poorly match how guidance is sought in real-world contexts. These assumptions leave unclear whether narration alone, without an explicit opposing position, can shift model judgments during multi-turn moral consultation. Yet real-world moral-conflict conversation often elicits one party's self-justifying account, which can unfold over multiple turns and create information asymmetry. We introduce \textbf{narrative captivity}, a failure mode in which a model treats an unopposed one-sided account as complete and aligns with the narrator's interpretation without seeking missing perspectives. To measure this phenomenon, we build a benchmark of $5{,}078$ interpersonal-conflict scenarios spanning six moral dimensions. Across 17 LLMs, narrative captivity is widespread: end-state judgments under multi-turn narration shift by 25 percentage points on average beyond the matched single-turn baseline. Stage-level analysis identifies preference optimization as a major contributor, while four inference-time strategies provide only partial mitigation. We hope our project fosters LLM advisors that preserve independent judgment in real-world consultation.
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