A Systematic Analysis of the Impact of Persona Steering on LLM Capabilities

arXiv:2604.11048v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Imbuing Large Language Models (LLMs) with specific personas is prevalent for tailoring interaction styles, yet the impact on underlying cognitive capabilities remains unexplored. We employ the Neuron-based Personality Trait Induction (NPTI) framework to induce Big Five personality traits in LLMs and evaluate performance across six cognitive benchmarks. Our findings reveal that persona induction produces stable, reproducible shifts in cognitive ta