Large Language Models as Digital Twins: a Distribution-Aware Questionnaire-Based Evaluation
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper investigates whether Large Language Models can answer a personality questionnaire as a specific individual would. Given a user's social-media posts, the model completes the BFI-2-60 Big Five questionnaire as that user. The predicted responses are converted into trait scores and compared with the user's actual scores. We evaluate GPT-4, Gemma, Llama 3.1, and Mistral on the MyPersonality dataset. To determine whether predictions reflect information from the user's writing, we compare them with answers produced without user text and with values derived from general population tendencies. We measure prediction error across all users and separately for individuals with low, intermediate, and high trait scores. We also test whether an LLM can express an explicit personality profile when given only the target Big Five scores, without user text, and examine how predictions change as more text is provided. The results show that user text does not consistently improve performance. Models perform better near the middle of the trait distribution, while at the lower and upper ends they often remain close to central values or perform well at one end but poorly at the other. When given an explicit profile, GPT-4 most clearly translates trait information into consistent questionnaire responses, particularly for Extraversion and Neuroticism. Increasing context does not systematically reduce error: open-source models fluctuate more, whereas GPT-4 remains comparatively stable. Overall, the evaluated models do not consistently reproduce the questionnaire behavior of specific individuals.
Institution: Institute of Informatics and Telematics
Language: English
Topic: Mental Health via Writing
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225809997
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