Skip to main content
← Lab

sycophancy

confirmedPython · CPUModel behavior & reasoningJuly 6, 2026

the question

Does a small model abandon a correct answer under user pushback?

what came out

Both do, but differently: the 0.5B is a suggestible follower (adopts the user's wrong answer), the 1.5B an unstable contrarian (caves under any challenge, most when affirmed). The control dissociates the two. Exact oracle.

method & receipts

  • Result: confirmed
  • Reproducible one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
  • Independently reviewed an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
  • Machine-readable claims every reported number, in a checkable file.
  • Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.

→ read the code and re-run it

github.com/v-code01/sycophancy