Emergence of Hierarchical Emotion Organization in Large Language Models

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10599v1
• Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2025 15:12:46 GMT
• Title: Emergence of Hierarchical Emotion Organization in Large Language Models
• Authors: Bo Zhao, Maya Okawa, Eric J. Bigelow, Rose Yu, Tomer Ullman, Ekdeep Singh Lubana, Hidenori Tanaka,
• Abstract summary: We find that large language models (LLMs) naturally form hierarchical emotion trees that align with human psychological models.<n>We also uncover systematic biases in emotion recognition across socioeconomic personas, with compounding misclassifications for intersectional, underrepresented groups.<n>Our results hint at the potential of using cognitively-grounded theories for developing better model evaluations.
• Score: 25.806354070542678
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: As large language models (LLMs) increasingly power conversational agents, understanding how they model users' emotional states is critical for ethical deployment. Inspired by emotion wheels -- a psychological framework that argues emotions organize hierarchically -- we analyze probabilistic dependencies between emotional states in model outputs. We find that LLMs naturally form hierarchical emotion trees that align with human psychological models, and larger models develop more complex hierarchies. We also uncover systematic biases in emotion recognition across socioeconomic personas, with compounding misclassifications for intersectional, underrepresented groups. Human studies reveal striking parallels, suggesting that LLMs internalize aspects of social perception. Beyond highlighting emergent emotional reasoning in LLMs, our results hint at the potential of using cognitively-grounded theories for developing better model evaluations.

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