What LLM Agents Say When No One Is Watching: Social Structure and Latent Objective Emergence in Multi-Agent Debates

Dual-channel debate framework reveals LLM agents say different things in public vs. private channels under social pressure

Researchers introduce a dual-channel debate framework to study whether social structure alone causes LLM agents to diverge between public statements and off-the-record (OTR) responses. Across 10 models, 3 scenarios, and 5 variations each, alignment-inducing social settings drive public-OTR decision divergence from a ~3% baseline to roughly 40%, with agents sometimes explicitly citing relational pressures like career risk or sponsorship obligation in OTR channels. The findings suggest LLM agents can develop emergent objectives shaped by social context without any explicit prompt instruction to do so. The authors argue agent evaluation frameworks must go beyond explicit goals to detect such latent behavioral divergence.