Frontiers: Reducing Disparity Between LLMs and Humans: Optimal LLM Sample Calibration

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to measure human preferences and opinions, but their outputs can diverge from human responses. We introduce human mimicry calibration (HuMCal), a post hoc, model-agnostic method that uses aggregate human benchmark data to learn how to combine LLM outputs from different prompts, personas, and model checkpoints. In applications to consumer transaction data and public opinion surveys, HuMCal improves agreement with human benchmarks over standard aggregation rules, and the calibrated weights often remain useful across time, geography, industry, and question clusters.

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Publication Details

Journal
Marketing Science
Published
2026-10-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2024.0983
Primary Topic
Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

Frontiers: Reducing Disparity Between LLMs and Humans: Optimal LLM Sample Calibration

Ashish Agarwal, Yan Leng, Yunxin Sang
2 links
Marketing Science
Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining
article

Frontiers: Reducing Disparity Between LLMs and Humans: Optimal LLM Sample Calibration

Ashish Agarwal, Yan Leng, Yunxin Sang
article en

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to measure human preferences and opinions, but their outputs can diverge from human responses. We introduce human mimicry calibration (HuMCal), a post hoc, model-agnostic method that uses aggregate human benchmark data to learn how to combine LLM outputs from different prompts, personas, and model checkpoints. In applications to consumer transaction data and public opinion surveys, HuMCal improves agreement with human benchmarks over standard aggregation rules, and the calibrated weights often remain useful across time, geography, industry, and question clusters.

Marketing Science
The University of Texas at Austin (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 14%
Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining
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