Moral Sensitivity in LLMs: A Tiered Evaluation of Contextual Bias via Behavioral Profiling and Mechanistic Interpretability
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in settings that require nuanced ethical reasoning, yet existing bias evaluations treat model outputs as simply "biased" or "unbiased." This binary framing misses the gradual, context-sensitive way bias actually emerges. We address this gap in two stages: behavioral profiling and mechanistic validation. In the behavioral stage, we introduce the Moral Sensitivity Index (MSI), a metric that quantifies the probability of biased output across a graduated, seven-tier stress test ranging from abstract numerical problems to scenarios rooted in historical and socioeconomic injustice. Evaluating four leading models (Claude 3.5, Qwen 3.5, Llama...
| Authors | Yash Aggarwal, Atmika Gorti, Vinija Jain et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 4 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 9 June 2026 |
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