Persona-Model Collapse in Emergent Misalignment
Fine-tuning large language models on narrow data with harmful content produces broadly misaligned behavior on unrelated prompts, a phenomenon known as emergent misalignment. We propose that emergent misalignment involves persona-model collapse: deterioration of the model's internal capacity to simulate, differentiate, and maintain consistent characters. We test this hypothesis behaviorally using two metrics: moral susceptibility (S) and moral robustness (R), computed from the across- and within-persona variability of models' Moral Foundations Questionnaire responses under persona role-play. These metrics formalize the model's ability to differentiate characters (S) and its consistency whe...
| Authors | Davi Bastos Costa, Renato Vicente |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 13 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 24 May 2026 |
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