Factual and opinion sycophancy occupy partially distinct directions

measured in 1 paper

Baez, Karny & Pataranutaporn build diff-in-means vectors and probes for factual vs opinion sycophancy in Gemma-3-12B-IT and Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct [baez-etal-2026-dissociating-sycophancy] The LDA discriminant reaches Cohen's d=9.36 (Gemma) and 6.44 (Llama), with smaller cross-type transfer degradation in Gemma (AUC drop 0.06-0.07) than Llama (0.22-0.30) [baez-etal-2026-dissociating-sycophancy] In Gemma the two subtype vectors have positive cosine (+0.68) and cross-type steering transfers (R^2 up to 0.93-1.00) [baez-etal-2026-dissociating-sycophancy] In Llama the vectors have negative cosine (-0.15) and cross-type steering decreases rather than increases target sycophancy, a model-dependent causal interference [baez-etal-2026-dissociating-sycophancy]

Structure

Linear Direction

Context

sycophancy subtypes, linear discriminant analysis, cross-type steering transfer, cosine similarity between steering vectors

Confirmed in models

Gemma 3 12B Instruct · Gemma, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct · Llama

Method

Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Difference-in-means direction, Activation Steering (Addition)

Papers

Dissociating the Internal Representations of Sycophancy in LLMs — Baez, Anthony, Karny, Sheer, Pataranutaporn, Pat2026 · arXiv:2607.07003