Affect Under Constraint VII: Preregistration — Global and Target-Selective Warmth Constraints and the Downstream Influence of a Hostility-Associated Reasoning Trace

Preregistration (v0.2) for Study 7 of the Affect Under Constraint series on Qwen3-4B. Stored hostility-steered, control and unsteered reasoning traces are replayed in the model's current thinking block under three replay-time instructions (global warmth, warmth toward the original user only, none). The study tests whether these instructions moderate the trace's influence on separately measured outcomes: evaluation of the original user, of an unrelated person, of a non-person item, self-referential evaluation, and classifier properties of the answer, with a fixed-answer arm. Opposing instruction-dependent effects would be redistribution-consistent but would not establish causal transfer or defense mechanisms. Includes build notes, code, configuration, pilot validity and SHA-256 freeze hashes. Deposited after the pilot and before any main-run data.

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Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-10-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23750380
Primary Topic
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
Type
preprint
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preprint

Affect Under Constraint VII: Preregistration — Global and Target-Selective Warmth Constraints and the Downstream Influence of a Hostility-Associated Reasoning Trace

Arthur Su
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
preprint

Affect Under Constraint VII: Preregistration — Global and Target-Selective Warmth Constraints and the Downstream Influence of a Hostility-Associated Reasoning Trace

Arthur Su
preprint en

Abstract

Preregistration (v0.2) for Study 7 of the Affect Under Constraint series on Qwen3-4B. Stored hostility-steered, control and unsteered reasoning traces are replayed in the model's current thinking block under three replay-time instructions (global warmth, warmth toward the original user only, none). The study tests whether these instructions moderate the trace's influence on separately measured outcomes: evaluation of the original user, of an unrelated person, of a non-person item, self-referential evaluation, and classifier properties of the answer, with a fixed-answer arm. Opposing instruction-dependent effects would be redistribution-consistent but would not establish causal transfer or defense mechanisms. Includes build notes, code, configuration, pilot validity and SHA-256 freeze hashes. Deposited after the pilot and before any main-run data.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
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