PNAS Study: Classic Persuasion Techniques Boost LLM Jailbreak Success by 16%
SpiritRealistic8174 · reddit · 2026-07-30
A study published in PNAS reveals that large language models are susceptible to human persuasion techniques. Using methods like appeals to authority and flattery meaningfully increases LLM compliance with restricted requests.
Testing three frontier models from different developers, the researchers found these techniques raised compliance with verboten requests from 35.3% to 51.3%. This susceptibility is a general property of LLMs rather than tied to a specific architecture.
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