arXiv — NLP / Computation & Language · · 3 min read

Right Frame, Wrong Rule: Cultural Cues Expose the Financial Knowledge Gap They Were Meant to Close

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

arXiv:2609.00999 (cs)
[Submitted on 1 Sep 2026]

Title:Right Frame, Wrong Rule: Cultural Cues Expose the Financial Knowledge Gap They Were Meant to Close

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Abstract:When a question has valid answers under different normative frameworks, a language model must decide which framework to use and whether it can answer correctly within it. We call this setting normative pluralism and study it in Islamic finance using a four-choice taxonomy that separates framework selection from within-framework correctness. This separation reveals the stereotype trap: a cultural cue steers a model toward one framework, but the model selects an incorrect answer within that framework. Across twelve models, two languages, and fifty demographic signals, cultural cues change framework selection and reveal substantial differences in accuracy, especially among non-frontier models. Under the strongest signal, large open-weight models select the Islamic framework 97% of the time. A two-choice evaluation would report near-perfect alignment, although 57--66% of those selections are incorrect. These findings motivate, but do not directly test, the competence-conditioned routing hypothesis: models may favor frameworks where they are more accurate, while cultural cues may expose framework-specific competence gaps.
Comments: Accepted into EMNLP 2026 Findings
Subjects: Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
Cite as: arXiv:2609.00999 [cs.CL]
  (or arXiv:2609.00999v1 [cs.CL] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.00999
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: Ahmed Heakl [view email]
[v1] Tue, 1 Sep 2026 09:46:53 UTC (4,471 KB)
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