Sycophancy Is Not One Thing: Causal Separation of Sycophantic Behaviors in LLMs

Daniel Vennemeyer, Phan Anh Duong, Tiffany Zhan, Tianyu Jiang

Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) often exhibit sycophantic behaviors -- such as excessive agreement with or flattery of the user -- but it is unclear whether these behaviors arise from a single mechanism or multiple distinct processes. We decompose sycophancy into sycophantic agreement and sycophantic praise, contrasting both with genuine agreement. Using difference-in-means directions, activation additions, and subspace geometry across multiple models and datasets, we show that: (1) the three behaviors are encoded along distinct linear directions in latent space; (2) each behavior can be independently amplified or suppressed without affecting the others; and (3) their representational structure is consistent across model families and scales. These results suggest that sycophantic behaviors correspond to distinct, independently steerable representations.

External IDs:dblp:journals/corr/abs-2509-21305