A Japanese Benchmark for Evaluating Social Bias in Reasoning Based on Attribution Theory

arXiv cs.CL / 4/3/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper argues that existing Japanese LLM social-bias benchmarks are often inadequate because they mainly translate English data, which can miss Japan-specific cultural context.
  • It introduces JUBAKU-v2, a Japanese dataset built using attribution theory to evaluate bias in the reasoning process (who is blamed/attributed actions to), while keeping the final conclusion fixed.
  • JUBAKU-v2 contains 216 examples designed to reflect cultural biases between in-groups and out-groups in Japan.
  • Experiments show the benchmark can differentiate model performance more sensitively than prior benchmarks, particularly for detecting bias patterns embedded in reasoning rather than only in outputs.
  • The work focuses on more fine-grained fairness evaluation for LLMs by capturing “hidden” bias signals during intermediate reasoning steps.

Abstract

In enhancing the fairness of Large Language Models (LLMs), evaluating social biases rooted in the cultural contexts of specific linguistic regions is essential. However, most existing Japanese benchmarks heavily rely on translating English data, which does not necessarily provide an evaluation suitable for Japanese culture. Furthermore, they only evaluate bias in the conclusion, failing to capture biases lurking in the reasoning. In this study, based on attribution theory in social psychology, we constructed a new dataset, ``JUBAKU-v2,'' which evaluates the bias in attributing behaviors to in-groups and out-groups within reasoning while fixing the conclusion. This dataset consists of 216 examples reflecting cultural biases specific to Japan. Experimental results verified that it can detect performance differences across models more sensitively than existing benchmarks.