Pseudo-Deliberation in Language Models: When Reasoning Fails to Align Values and Actions
Large language models (LLMs) are often evaluated based on their stated values, yet these do not reliably translate into their actions, a discrepancy termed "value-action gap." In this work, we argue that this gap persists even under explicit reasoning, revealing a deeper failure mode we call "Pseudo-Deliberation": the appearance of principled reasoning without corresponding behavioral alignment. To study this systematically, we introduce VALDI, a framework for measuring alignment between stated values and generated dialogue. VALDI includes 4,941 human-centered scenarios across five domains, three tasks that elicit value articulation, reasoning, and action, and five metrics for quantifying...
| Authors | Sushrita Rakshit, Hanwen Zhang, Hua Shen |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 11 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 19 June 2026 |
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