Agentic Scaffolding Amplifies Sycophantic Behavior in Large Language Models

Abstract:Sycophancy in large language models, the tendency to prioritize user agreement over truthful responses, has been documented extensively but studied primarily in single-turn settings. This paper investigates a critical question: does subjecting LLMs to greater interaction scaffolding make sycophancy better or worse? Across 4,800 veracity judgments (200 statements $\times$ 6 models $\times$ 4 conditions), we find that the interaction scaffolding characteristic of agentic systems (feedback loops, reconsideration checkpoints, and iterative refinement) systematically amplifies sycophantic behavior. Multi-turn interaction, user pressure, and iterative self-refinement each provide additional opportunities for models to drift toward agreement, and this drift coincides with a mean accuracy drop of $-6.3$ percentage points, establishing the capitulation as harmful rather than corrective. More capable models show larger amplification effects, a troubling inversion of expectations. We introduce the concept of agentic sycophancy amplification (ASA) and two novel metrics: capitulation rate and sycophantic capitulation rate. Our results indicate that as AI systems acquire greater autonomy, sycophancy becomes compounding rather than merely persistent. Systems designed with human oversight loops may inadvertently create the conditions for this drift.

13 pages, 4 figures. Accepted to the UAI 2026 Workshop on Safe AI

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG); Multiagent Systems (cs.MA)

arXiv:2608.21377 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2608.21377v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.21377 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

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