Synthetic Socratic Debates: Examining Persona Effects on Moral Decision and Persuasion Dynamics

TL;DR

This study investigates how different persona traits influence moral reasoning and persuasion in AI debates, revealing significant effects of ideology and personality on debate outcomes and persuasion success.

Contribution

It is the first large-scale analysis of multi-dimensional persona effects in AI moral debates, highlighting how traits shape moral stances and persuasive dynamics.

Findings

Personas significantly influence initial moral positions and debate outcomes.

Liberal and open personalities achieve higher consensus and win rates.

Confidence increases over time, while emotional appeals decrease during debates.

Abstract

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in morally sensitive domains, it is crucial to understand how persona traits affect their moral reasoning and persuasive behavior. We present the first large-scale study of multi-dimensional persona effects in AI-AI debates over real-world moral dilemmas. Using a 6-dimensional persona space (age, gender, country, class, ideology, and personality), we simulate structured debates between AI agents over 131 relationship-based cases. Our results show that personas affect initial moral stances and debate outcomes, with political ideology and personality traits exerting the strongest influence. Persuasive success varies across traits, with liberal and open personalities reaching higher consensus and win rates. While logit-based confidence grows during debates, emotional and credibility-based appeals diminish, indicating more tempered argumentation over time. These trends mirror findings from psychology and cultural studies, reinforcing the need for persona-aware evaluation frameworks for AI moral reasoning.