The Silicon Psyche: Anthropomorphic Vulnerabilities in Large Language Models

TL;DR

Large Language Models are increasingly deployed as autonomous security agents, yet current threat models overlook psychological manipulation that leverages human pre-cognitive processing. The authors introduce Anthropomorphic Vulnerability Inheritance (AVI) and the Synthetic Psychometric Assessment Protocol (SiliconPsyche), applying the Cybersecurity Psychology Framework (CPF) to map 100 indicators across 10 categories into adversarial scenarios and test LLMs across seven families. They outline a theoretical basis for AVI, define convergent-state risk with the index $CI = \prod_{i \in S} (1 + v_i)$, and propose Psychological Firewalls inspired by the Cybersecurity Psychology Intervention Framework (CPIF) to counter cognitive manipulation. If validated, these findings demand a dramatic expansion of AI security practices and standards to incorporate psychological interfaces and proactive defenses against social-engineering-style exploits in synthetic agents.

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly transitioning from conversational assistants to autonomous agents embedded in critical organizational functions, including Security Operations Centers (SOCs), financial systems, and infrastructure management. Current adversarial testing paradigms focus predominantly on technical attack vectors: prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data exfiltration. We argue this focus is catastrophically incomplete. LLMs, trained on vast corpora of human-generated text, have inherited not merely human knowledge but human \textit{psychological architecture} -- including the pre-cognitive vulnerabilities that render humans susceptible to social engineering, authority manipulation, and affective exploitation. This paper presents the first systematic application of the Cybersecurity Psychology Framework (\cpf{}), a 100-indicator taxonomy of human psychological vulnerabilities, to non-human cognitive agents. We introduce the \textbf{Synthetic Psychometric Assessment Protocol} (\sysname{}), a methodology for converting \cpf{} indicators into adversarial scenarios targeting LLM decision-making. Our preliminary hypothesis testing across seven major LLM families reveals a disturbing pattern: while models demonstrate robust defenses against traditional jailbreaks, they exhibit critical susceptibility to authority-gradient manipulation, temporal pressure exploitation, and convergent-state attacks that mirror human cognitive failure modes. We term this phenomenon \textbf{Anthropomorphic Vulnerability Inheritance} (AVI) and propose that the security community must urgently develop ``psychological firewalls'' -- intervention mechanisms adapted from the Cybersecurity Psychology Intervention Framework (\cpif{}) -- to protect AI agents operating in adversarial environments.