Researchers increasingly use human-derived bias constructs to study Large Language Models (LLMs), including social-cognitive constructs such as implicit bias and stereotype activation, and cognitive biases such as anchoring, framing effects, and confirmation bias.
However, adapting human bias constructs to LLMs introduces an inferential gap. Psychological instruments were developed to study human cognition and social behaviour, whereas LLM evaluations rely on probabilities, text completions, rankings, or simulated decisions.
This paper critiques human-centered bias evaluation in LLMs. We show how this gap arises from mismatches pertaining to human-derived constructs, human-model differences, and evaluation contexts, which can blur distinct interpretations of model bias.
We then introduce a framework providing an analytical lens for relating these elements to warranted interpretations, with attention to target constructs, operationalizations, scope of inference, and limits of human analogy.