当推理模型损害行为模拟:多智能体LLM谈判中的求解器-采样器错配
阅读原文· arxiv.org研究发现,增强推理能力的大型语言模型在多智能体行为模拟中可能反而降低保真度。当目标是采样有限理性行为而非求解战略问题时,推理增强的模型会过度优化主导策略,导致妥协行为消失。通过在三个谈判环境(含紧急电力管理场景)的实验显示,有限反思比原生推理生成更多样化且倾向妥协的轨迹:GPT-5.2原生推理在45次运行中全部产生权威决策,而有限反思恢复了妥协结果。这表明行为模拟应更关注模型的采样能力而非求解能力。
Large language models are increasingly used as agents in social, economic, and policy simulations. A common assumption is that stronger reasoning should improve simulation fidelity. We argue that this assumption can fail when the objective is not to solve a strategic problem, but to sample plausible boundedly rational behavior. In such settings, reasoning-enhanced models can become better solvers and worse simulators: they can over-optimize for strategically dominant actions, collapse compromise-oriented terminal behavior, and sometimes exhibit a diversity-without-fidelity pattern in which local variation survives without outcome-level fidelity. We study this solver-sampler mismatch in three multi-agent negotiation environments adapted from earlier simulation work: an ambiguous fragmented-authority trading-limits scenario, an ambiguous unified-opposition trading-limits scenario, and a new-domain grid-curtailment case in emergency electricity management. We compare three reflection conditions, no reflection, bounded reflection, and native reasoning, across two primary model families and then extend the same protocol to direct OpenAI runs with GPT-4.1 and GPT-5.2. Across all three experiments, bounded reflection produces substantially more diverse and compromise-oriented trajectories than either no reflection or native reasoning. In the direct OpenAI extension, GPT-5.2 native ends in authority decisions in 45 of 45 runs across the three experiments, while GPT-5.2 bounded recovers compromise outcomes in every environment. The contribution is not a claim that reasoning is generally harmful. It is a methodological warning: model capability and simulation fidelity are different objectives, and behavioral simulation should qualify models as samplers, not only as solvers.