{"id":240255,"date":"2026-07-03T23:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T04:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/free-text-answers-and-llms-reveal-hidden-reasons-behind-human-choices"},"modified":"2026-07-03T23:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T04:08:27","slug":"free-text-answers-and-llms-reveal-hidden-reasons-behind-human-choices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/free-text-answers-and-llms-reveal-hidden-reasons-behind-human-choices","title":{"rendered":"Free-text answers and LLMs reveal hidden reasons behind human choices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/free-text-answers-and-llms-reveal-hidden-reasons-behind-human-choices3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Why do people make the choices they do? Researchers from the Center Synergy of Systems (SynoSys) at TUD Dresden University of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and the University of Basel present their new approach to finding answers to that question. The approach combines observed choices with participants\u2019 own descriptions of their decision processes, allowing researchers to study human behavior in greater detail than is possible with behavioral data alone.<\/p>\n<p>The team merged behavioral experiments and free-text explanations to uncover the reasons underlying human decisions with the help of large language models (LLM). Their results are <a href=\"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2526798123\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do people make the choices they do? Researchers from the Center Synergy of Systems (SynoSys) at TUD Dresden University of Technology, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and the University of Basel present their new approach to finding answers to that question. The approach combines observed choices with participants\u2019 own descriptions of their [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}