MAPS: Multi-Agent Personality Shaping for Collaborative Reasoning

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Authors: Association for Artificial Intelligence 2026, Erik Cambria, Qika Lin, Jun Liu, Rui Mao, Zhiyuan Wang, Zhangqi Wang, Fangzhi Xu, LingLing Zhang, JIAN ZHANG
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Collaborative reasoning with multiple agents offers the potential for more robust and diverse problem-solving. However, existing approaches often suffer from homogeneous agent behaviors and lack of reflective and rethinking capabilities. We propose Multi-Agent Personality Shaping ((MAPS), a novel framework that enhances reasoning through agent diversity and internal critique. Inspired by the Big Five personality theory, MAPS assigns distinct personality traits to individual agents, shaping their reasoning styles and promoting heterogeneous collaboration. To enable deeper and more adaptive reasoning, MAPS introduces a Critic agent that reflects on intermediate outputs, revisits flawed steps, and guides iterative refinement. This integration of personality-driven agent design and structured collaboration improves both reasoning depth and flexibility. Empirical evaluations across three benchmarks demonstrate the strong performance of MAPS, with further analysis confirming its generalizability across different large language models and validating the benefits of multi-agent collaboration.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Multi-Agent Systems and Negotiation AI-based Problem Solving and Planning Logic Reasoning and Knowledge

Publication details

Journal / source
Underline Science Inc.
Publication date
7 January 2026
Language
EN