Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Psychological constructs in humans range along a state-trait continuum: traits persist across situations, while states fluctuate with context.Studies have shown that language models exhibit measurable psychological constructs, yet whether these constructs differ in contextual stability, as the state-trait distinction predicts, remains untested.We present the Questionnaire for Causal Language Models (QCLM), a psychometric framework that measures constructs through next-token probability distributions of base models.Applying QCLM to 35 causal language models under vanilla, stress, and neutral conditions, we assess two anxiety instruments targeting opposite ends of the state-trait continuum: STAI-S (state anxiety) and STAI-T (trait anxiety).Paired effect sizes and variance decomposition reveal that state anxiety is more sensitive to stress manipulation than trait anxiety: stimulus type accounts for a larger share of variance in state anxiety, while model identity contributes more to trait anxiety.These results provide empirical evidence that the state-trait distinction extends to language model behavior.
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7166555191