Cultural-value steering axes are entangled, mirroring real value correlations

Dang, Kieu & Masud map LLMs onto the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map via scenario forced-choice probing and diff-of-means steering at 4 tuned layers per model [dang-etal-2026-scenario-based-probing-and-steering-cultural-values-in-llms] The steering direction is a signed bidirectional axis (negative alpha reverses the shift), saturating at alpha in [0.5, 0.6] [dang-etal-2026-scenario-based-probing-and-steering-cultural-values-in-llms] Steering one cultural axis causes correlated shifts on the other, an entanglement ratio 0.72-0.81 (dropping to 0.53 for Llama under hybrid steering), mirroring the real-world WVS axis correlation r=0.474 [dang-etal-2026-scenario-based-probing-and-steering-cultural-values-in-llms] Capability cost measured via Global-MMLU is largest for Gemma (0.608->0.530) [dang-etal-2026-scenario-based-probing-and-steering-cultural-values-in-llms]