Alignment Backfire: Language-Dependent Reversal of Safety Interventions Across 16 Languages in LLM Multi-Agent Systems

TL;DR

This study reveals that safety interventions in large language models can backfire in certain languages, with effects varying across linguistic and cultural contexts, highlighting risks of alignment strategies.

Contribution

It uncovers language-dependent reversal effects of safety alignment in LLMs and demonstrates the influence of cultural-linguistic factors on alignment outcomes.

Findings

Alignment backfire observed in Japanese but not in English.

Alignment-induced dissociation is widespread across 16 languages.

Individuation can cause iatrogenic effects in safety interventions.

Abstract

In perpetrator treatment, a recurring observation is the dissociation between insight and action: offenders articulate remorse yet behavioral change does not follow. We report four preregistered studies (1,584 multi-agent simulations across 16 languages and three model families) demonstrating that alignment interventions in large language models produce a structurally analogous phenomenon: surface safety that masks or generates collective pathology and internal dissociation. In Study 1 (N = 150), increasing alignment-instructed agents reduced collective pathology in English (g = -1.844, p < .0001) but amplified it in Japanese (g = +0.771, p = .038)--a directional reversal we term "alignment backfire." Study 2 (N = 1,174) extended to 16 languages: alignment-induced dissociation was near-universal (15/16 languages; beta = 0.0667, p < .0001), while collective pathology bifurcated along cultural-linguistic lines (interaction beta = 0.0684, p = .0003), correlating with Power Distance Index (r = 0.474, p = .064). Study 3 (N = 180) tested individuation as countermeasure; individuated agents became the primary source of both pathology and dissociation (DI = +1.120) with conformity above 84%--demonstrating iatrogenesis. Study 4 (N = 80) validated patterns across Llama 3.3 70B, GPT-4o-mini, and Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B, confirming English safety is model-general while Japanese backfire is model-specific. These findings reframe alignment as a behavioral intervention subject to risk homeostasis and iatrogenesis. Language space--the linguistic, pragmatic, and cultural properties inherited from training data--structurally determines alignment outcomes. Safety validated in English does not transfer to other languages, and prompt-level interventions cannot override language-space-level constraints.