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The standard mitigation, Contrastive Activation Addition (CAA), derives a steering direction from labelled pairs of sycophantic and honest responses. This study evaluates whether off-the-shelf persona steering vectors, originally developed for general role-playing and not trained on sycophancy data, can serve as an alternative. In two instruction-tuned models, steering toward personas characterised by doubt or scrutiny reduces sycophancy to approximately $68\\%$ and $98\\%$ of CAA's effect, and, unlike CAA, maintains accuracy when the user is correct. The effect is also asymmetric: steering toward agreeable personas does not produce a mirror increase in sycophancy. Geometrically, the persona vector is largely independent of the direction of sycophancy in activation space. Collectively, these findings suggest th","title":"Playing Devil's Advocate: Off-the-Shelf Persona Vectors Rival Targeted Steering for Sycophancy","url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21006","vendor":"arxiv_cs_ai"},"summary":"arXiv:2605.21006v2 Announce Type: replace \nAbstract: We study the effect of different persona on \\textbf{sycophancy}: model's agreement with users even when the user is incorrect. The standard mitigation, Contrastive Activation Addition (CAA), derives a steering direction from labelled pairs of sycophantic and honest responses. This study evaluates whether off-the-shelf persona steering vectors, originally developed for general role-playing and not trained on sycophancy data, can serve as an alternative. In two instruction-tuned models, steering toward personas characterised by doubt or scrutiny reduces sycophancy to approximately $68\\%$ and $98\\%$ of CAA's effect, and, unlike CAA, maintains accuracy when the user is correct. The effect is also asymmetric: steering toward agreeable personas does not produce a mirror increase in sycophancy. Geometrically, the persona vector is largely independent of the direction of sycophancy in activation space. Collectively, these findings suggest th","title":"Playing Devil's Advocate: Off-the-Shelf Persona Vectors Rival Targeted Steering for Sycophancy","vendor":"arxiv_cs_ai"},"confidence":{"method":"deterministic"},"decision":"POSITIVE","issued_at":"2026-06-09T04:43:45Z","notes":"Spider vendor_press (news) news.vendor_press.v1","object":{"captured_by":"crovia.spider.vendor_press","primary_source_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21006"},"predecessors":[],"schema":"crovia.axiom.v1","signature":"ed25519:82f2d9961f2befe65d98b559fa54ecfdbbccbeb68ba12e2d1e8c700dc77a0bd7f6ace1bee136e74da0975c42ecc568b8731b0ac5a1f849170ee6593b570f8700","signer":"crovia.substrate","subject":{"observed_at":"2026-06-09T04:43:45Z","source_collector":"spider:vendor_press","target_id":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21006"},"tsa":{"authority":"crovia.substrate.bootstrap","rfc3161_token":"{\"kind\":\"crovia.bootstrap.tsa\",\"source_jsonl\":\"/opt/crovia/spider/data/news/vendor_press_v1.jsonl\",\"source_seal_merkle_root\":\"spider_vendor_press_v1\",\"upgrade_path\":\"Sessione H \\u2014 OpenTimestamps weekly anchor\"}"},"zk_mode":"clear","zk_proof":null},"ledger":{"leaf_hash":"b9e01869280f691b90ff057e18c59a4fc0a5c2e0157817ab6d59b47daee02314","leaf_index":224491,"ledger_path":"/opt/crovia/substrate/axiom_ledger.jsonl"},"merkle_proof":{"hash_alg":"sha256","leaf_prefix":"0x00","node_prefix":"0x01","odd_leaf_rule":"duplicate_last","path":[{"sibling":"cfe8a416b7a03abafb67a91e11e9cce0a9328eff7da647e6a6577adca2ee018f","side":"left"},{"sibling":"d1f40e977591574c82c1b518a0f741fc282108227391e960b3fbb29495b6bad0","side":"left"},{"sibling":"78d47cda248d1fa5c11e3e4603020a8a6ce864c1b4087a2f81d3c9f1c6854263","side":"right"},{"sibling":"52420eb00635b810364936e6766b2c2687e6afbd93acc2604cec93449e3516d2","side":"left"},{"sibling":"97c9f90c8b54d05e16f72bf0053ae545eef082c3d33b1cbd1f00081c497b2b5a","side":"right"},{"sibling":"6e6a7a2914d3a91e069ed40df783d3abc37242218e191e26107d0e41d8213579","side":"left"},{"sibling":"6544944fc5c0722251532a5665622a7bb9e1790fe437c54f30cf1b0f097f4768","side":"left"},{"sibling":"0dba1b4aa8c69a39c01dbd9d9884405788a8121b073c56815159112e9ccba4bd","side":"left"},{"sibling":"f6fb234a4e2f067b22329eec05b093a8b38f0411de9434d5a8eb55c2f70f1a2f","side":"right"},{"sibling":"b2df6a4bb3e928f0b447931cc688ae01d2415773a2b07cfed0b1cba689078aed","side":"right"},{"sibling":"b1c9ec856caa0fd46bb47b46f18c59ebcd295d774ca17adb3b46f05d394a6a5d","side":"left"},{"sibling":"24fdc29d461691aedb6fa920758206b5bb43851f477ef7a04c34aaed84b8971b","side":"left"},{"sibling":"036922da4e1e2c46d948f070454bfad299b7406fb00735ea9d8bd1e687f5f445","side":"right"},{"sibling":"533d82482604463aa4a281b9d8b85917b383b7c5f924b2b494039524c55e8797","side":"left"},{"sibling":"b2590791b920ca2a4ed39de126d2c0b1a10d9e7e62f572f12425f214e767b6e1","side":"left"},{"sibling":"87c6b850dfec08ac35a693d9db3a3315250a68adb1cfab9b1015f212b63b15bd","side":"right"},{"sibling":"c300cf0154c136afc09b1702a0be98f4ba5b6dc5cf57e8cc714ec1eaf4196eff","side":"left"},{"sibling":"d841ad93efda0869e5eb97678f348f03f5caab4353e05ff4bf18f47fb945b822","side":"left"}]},"schema":"crovia.axiom_proof.v1","seal":{"first_collector_run_id":"","first_receipt_hash":"","jsonl_path":"/opt/crovia/substrate/axiom_ledger.jsonl","key_id":"430895f101d38164","last_collector_run_id":"","last_receipt_hash":"","leaf_count":224761,"merkle_root":"e9f7b49b652e869ab97ffba9c5a31356b2d0e3dc5d00bb28944adf737c46b1e7","public_key_hex":"cf742e26f75669dc673cb5c0786a1ae23ae8ca19c347317192ce40c28a7ff25c","run_id":"hourly_json_retrofit_20260609T103805Z","schema":"crovia.seal.v1","seal_family_version":"crovia-seal-family/1","seal_kind":"substrate_batch","sealed_at":"2026-06-09T14:15:34Z","sig_algorithm":"ed25519","signature":"8ad8076fb12c8e486ae1d1559a9a7ba8e2ee996a9ad3d8ba7bcdbdbd88ab3a15bcb429707aca6d3e9d8b97e2ba755b3dcc77b1abb6601ccb829842719a6fb30d","signer_version":"1.1.0"},"trust_root":{"key_id":"430895f101d38164","public_key_hex":"cf742e26f75669dc673cb5c0786a1ae23ae8ca19c347317192ce40c28a7ff25c","signature_algorithm":"ed25519","url":"/registry/canon/TRUST_ROOT.md"},"verifier":{"spec":"/registry/canon/AXIOM_RECEIPT_v1.md","url":"/v/axm_ca139ed89e26d38a4c565306e37fbedcf7f5960fbe4f5db838e432759f4ae7b5"}}