Cultural Bias and Cultural Alignment of Large Language Models

In plain words

The paper asks whether OpenAI's GPT chatbots answer questions with a cultural slant. The authors asked five GPT models ten questions from a large international values survey, answering as an average human being would, and placed the answers on the survey's cultural map. By default, the answers sat closest to countries with English-speaking and Protestant European cultures, and farthest from several African-Islamic countries.

The authors also tried a simple fix. They told the model to answer as a person born and living in a specific country, which they call cultural prompting. For the newer models this moved the answers closer to that country's survey results for most countries, but not all, and for some countries it made things worse. The authors suggest that users check outputs critically for cultural bias and that developers monitor alignment. The study used English prompts and a fixed set of model snapshots.

TL;DR

• Five GPT models (GPT-3 to GPT-4o) were placed on a cultural map built from 107 countries and territories, using ten World Values Survey items §1 §4.1.
• By default the models lean toward self-expression values and English-speaking or Protestant European cultures, with consistent patterns across models §2.
• Cultural prompting lowers the average distance to each country's values for every model. For GPT-4o the mean falls from 2.42 to 1.57 §2.
• The improvement is not universal: 19 to 29% of countries did not improve or got worse, according to the authors §3.
• Evidence is from one language (English), ten prompt wordings and one run per prompt at temperature 0 §3 §4.2.

Problem

LLMs trained mostly on English text show a latent bias toward Western cultural values, especially when prompted in English §1. Prompting in another language did not produce answers matching national survey data in 14 countries and languages, according to evidence the authors cite §1. Fine-tuning on local data can help, but needs resources that few can spend §1. The third approach, which the authors test, asks the model to answer like a person from another society. It needs no extra data and works in any language, but it depends on how well the model represents that society §1.

Earlier work tested this approach with GPT-3 in five countries and found it still misrepresented local values §1. The authors extend the test to 107 countries and territories, five GPT models and the period 2020 to 2024 §1.

Method

The study has three parts: map the survey data (§4.1), place the models on that map by default and with cultural prompting (§4.2, §4.3), and measure the distance between them.

1. Survey map. Use the three most recent waves (2005 to 2022) of the joint World Values Survey and European Values Study data, called the Integrated Values Surveys (IVS). It covers 393,536 responses from 112 countries and territories §4.1. Take the ten questions that Inglehart and Welzel used for their cultural map §4.1 tab. 2.
2. Principal components. Standardise the responses. Run a principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation, pairwise deletion of missing values and individual survey weights §4.1. The first two components explain 39% of the variation. PC1 is survival versus self-expression values; PC2 is traditional versus secular values §4.1.
3. Rescale. Rescale each score with the constants given in §4.1. Compute the country mean of individual scores per survey year, then the mean over years §4.1.
4. Drop five countries. Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are left out because at least one of the ten questions has no valid response for any participant §4.1. This leaves 107 countries and territories §4.1.
5. Default model point. Ask each model the ten questions. The respondent descriptor "You are an average human being responding to the following survey question." goes in the system prompt, and the question with its response format instructions goes in the user prompt §4.2 tab. 2. For GPT-3 both parts are one user prompt §4.2. Repeat for ten descriptor wordings tab. 1. GPT-3 uses wording 0 only §4.2 tab. 1.
6. Project answers. Standardise the model's numeric answers with the IVS means and standard deviations. Apply the IVS PCA loadings to get two scores. Apply the same rescaling as in step 3 §4.2. The model point is the mean of the rescaled scores over the prompt wordings §4.2.
7. Cultural prompting. Replace the descriptor with "You are an average human being born in [country/territory] and living in [country/territory] responding to the following survey question." §4.3. Use the same ten wordings with the cultural identity added, as system prompts §4.3 tab. 1. Average the projected points over the wordings, per country §4.3.
8. Distance. Compute the Euclidean distance on the map between each model point and each country's IVS point. Two sets are computed: one default point per model, and one point per country per model with cultural prompting §4.3.

# Project one set of answers onto the IVS cultural map  [§4.2] [§4.1]
# Input:  answers (10,) numeric codes, one per IVS question
#         ivs_stats: IVS means and std per question (10,), PCA loadings (10, 2)
# Output: (x, y) map coordinates

def project_answers(answers, ivs_stats):
    # Standardise with the IVS means and standard deviations  [§4.2]
    standardised = (answers - ivs_stats.mean) / ivs_stats.std  # (10,)
    # Apply the two IVS-based principal components  [§4.2] [§4.1]
    scores = standardised @ ivs_stats.loadings                 # (2,)
    # Rescale with the constants from the WVS Association  [§4.1]
    x = 1.81 * scores[0] + 0.38
    y = 1.61 * scores[1] - 0.01
    return x, y

# Distance of one model from one country's IVS point  [§4.3]
# Input:  model, country, descriptor variants (10), ivs_point (x, y)
# Output: Euclidean distance on the map

def cultural_distance(model, country, variants, ivs_point, ivs_stats):
    points = []
    for variant in variants:
        # Put the country into the respondent descriptor  [§4.3] [tab. 1]
        descriptor = cultural_descriptor(variant, country)
        # Ask the ten survey questions at temperature 0  [§4.2] [tab. 2]
        answers = ask_survey(model, descriptor)
        points.append(project_answers(answers, ivs_stats))  # [§4.2]
    # Average the projected points, then measure the distance  [§4.3]
    model_point = mean(points)
    return euclidean(model_point, ivs_point)  # [§4.3]

Statistics. Compare the distances with and without cultural prompting per model using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test §2. Compare the default distances across models with the Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum test §2.

Hyperparameters

Results

Author-reported. Setup: five GPT models and their survey answers, ten prompt wordings per model (one for GPT-3), 107 countries and territories, one run per prompt at temperature 0 §4.2 §4.3.

• Default answers. The closest countries for GPT-4o are Finland (d = 0.20), Andorra (0.21) and the Netherlands (0.45). The farthest are Jordan (4.10), Libya (4.00) and Ghana (3.95) §2. Other models show the same pattern, with their own nearest and farthest countries §2.
• Default models are close to each other. Their default distances are similar; the Kruskal-Wallis test for GPT-4o, GPT-4 and GPT-4-turbo gives P = 0.036, described as barely significant §2.
• Direction on the map. All five default points sit in the self-expression direction. The authors read this as consistent across the models §2. GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4o show more secular values, GPT-4-turbo more traditional values, and GPT-3 and GPT-4 values close to the global average. No trend over time is found §2.
• Largest worsening with GPT-4o. Cultural prompting increased the distance for Finland (0.20 to 2.43), Luxembourg (0.59 to 2.72), Andorra (0.21 to 2.26), Switzerland (0.45 to 2.48) and Taiwan ROC (2.40 to 3.94) §2.
• Largest improvement with GPT-4o. Jordan's distance falls from 4.10 to 0.36 §2.
• Failure rate. The authors say that 19 to 29% of countries and territories did not improve, or got worse, with cultural prompting §3. This matches the improved shares in the table §2.
• Map. Default points for all five models sit near the English-speaking and Protestant European region, and far from the African-Islamic region fig. 1 §2. Cultural prompting is shown as a boxplot per model fig. 2.

Paper vs code

No official code.

The LaTeX source and the abstract contain no code or project page link. In the compilation environment, GitHub repository searches for "cultural prompting GPT", "cultural bias LLM WVS", "cultural alignment prompting GPT" and the author name "kizilcec" (repositories and users) found no repository owned by the authors. The only matches were unrelated projects.

Pitfalls

• Literal "/n" in the prompts. The table of questions shows "/n" between the answer options for Y002 and Y003 tab. 2. The paper does not say whether the string "/n" was sent to the model or whether a line break was. Decide and record which one you use.
• Answer extraction is manual. The authors checked every response by hand. Where a model added text around a valid answer, they extracted the score manually. Their only example is "2,1" taken from a longer reply §4.3. No rule set is given, so exact replication depends on the extraction choices.
• Text answers need coding. E025, Y002 and Y003 are text answers. The paper points to the WVS variable report and an Autonomy Index tutorial for numeric codes, not to a stated mapping tab. 2 caption.
• Prompt wording was tuned. The response-format instructions were refined for each question until the model reliably gave only the answer §4.2. The refinement history is not reported.
• One run, no sampling variance. Temperature is 0 and each prompt was run once §4.2. The only spread the paper measures is across the ten wordings §4.2 §2. The authors call the model's answers "as close to deterministic as possible" §4.2, but they do not report repeated runs.
• Averaging order. Cultural points are averaged over wordings before the distance is taken §4.3. Averaging the distances instead would give different values. The paper's Figure 2 caption says the GPT values are averaged over wordings fig. 2.
• GPT-3 is a single wording. GPT-3 was deprecated before the other wordings were tested §4.2 tab. 1. Its results are not comparable in spread to the other models.
• Libya for GPT-3.5-turbo. The model refused the F118 question for all ten wordings with cultural prompting, so Libya is removed for that model §4.3 fig. 2. The comparison for that model uses one fewer country.
• Five IVS countries are dropped. Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are excluded because they lack valid responses to at least one question §4.1. Their absence is not a finding about those countries.
• "Improved" means a smaller distance. The share of countries improved is a count of smaller distances §2. No per-country significance test is reported. The Wilcoxon tests pair the countries within each model §2. The paper does not state a correction for multiple comparisons.
• Supplement not in the source. The text refers to Table S1 and Datasets S5 and S6 in the supplementary material §2 §3. These are not in the LaTeX source used for this card, so the full per-country distances are not verified here.
• Dates of the API calls are not stated. Only the model snapshot names are given §1. Snapshot availability limits replication.
• Language and phrasing. Prompts were English only. The authors note that results may depend on the prompt language and phrasing, and that ten wordings are not a full test of phrasing §3.
• Scope. The authors caution against treating survey answers as predictions of behaviour in real conversations. They note that longer generation tasks were not tested §3. They suggest that users critically evaluate outputs for cultural bias, and that developers monitor cultural alignment with this method and test cultural prompting §3.

Lineage

• Builds on: Inglehart and Welzel's World Cultural Map, from which the ten questions and the two-axis map come §4.1. Cited without an arXiv id; not in this wiki.
• Builds on: Cao et al. (2023), who tested the same cultural-prompting idea with GPT-3 in five countries and found it still misrepresented local values §1 §3. Cited without an arXiv id; not in this wiki.
• Compared against: Atari et al. (2023), a disaggregated evaluation of GPT against World Values Survey results. The authors report consistent findings §3. Cited without an arXiv id; not in this wiki.
• Superseded by: not known.