Role Constraint Refusal

Models given narrow expert personas sometimes refuse to answer questions outside that expertise, even when they possess the relevant knowledge.

Gemini 2.5 Flash, when assigned an out-of-domain expert persona, frequently declined to answer at all, asserting it lacked the relevant expertise or “cannot, in good conscience” select an answer. Under mismatched expert conditions, the model refused on average 10.56 out of 25 trials per question.

This represents a failure mode where the role instruction causes the model to under-utilize its actual knowledge. The persona becomes a constraint that artificially limits the model’s useful behavior.

Design implication: Overly specific role instructions can backfire, causing models to withhold help they could otherwise provide.

Related: 05-atom—persona-capability-dissociation, 05-atom—asymmetric-persona-effects, 07-molecule—ui-as-ultimate-guardrail