Beyond "I cannot fulfill this request": Alleviating Rigid Rejection in LLMs via Label Enhancement

Ying Zhang, Congyu Qiao, Xin Geng, Ning Xu · May 8, 2026 · Citations: 0

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How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Validate the evaluation procedure and quality controls in the full paper before operational use.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones. However, traditional refusal mechanisms often lead to "rigid rejection," where a general template (e.g., "I cannot fulfill this request") indiscriminately triggers refusals and severely undermines the naturalness of interactions between humans and LLMs. To address this issue, LANCE is proposed in this paper to ensure safe yet flexible and natural responses via label enhancement. Specifically, LANCE employs variational inference to perform label enhancement, predicting a continuous distribution across multiple rejection categories. These fine-grained rejection distributions provide multi-way textual gradients for a refinement model to neutralize the hazardous elements in the prompt, so that the LLMs could generate safe responses that avoid rigid rejections while preserving the naturalness of interactions. Experiments demonstrate that LANCE significantly alleviates the rigid rejection problem while maintaining high security standards, significantly outperforming existing baseline models in terms of helpfulness and naturalness of responses.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
The abstract does not clearly describe the evaluation setup.

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Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

Background context only.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Weak / implicit signal

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 20%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

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What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones."

Reported Metrics

partial

Helpfulness

Useful for evaluation criteria comparison.

"Experiments demonstrate that LANCE significantly alleviates the rigid rejection problem while maintaining high security standards, significantly outperforming existing baseline models in terms of helpfulness and naturalness of responses."

Human Feedback Details

Uses human feedback: No
Feedback types: None
Rater population: Not reported
Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

Evaluation modes:
Agentic eval: None
Quality controls: Not reported
Evidence quality: Low
Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

helpfulness

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones.
However, traditional refusal mechanisms often lead to "rigid rejection," where a general template (e.g., "I cannot fulfill this request") indiscriminately triggers refusals and severely undermines the naturalness of interactions between humans and LLMs.
To address this issue, LANCE is proposed in this paper to ensure safe yet flexible and natural responses via label enhancement.

Researcher Actions

Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
Check the full text for explicit evaluation design choices (raters, protocol, and metrics).
Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones.
However, traditional refusal mechanisms often lead to "rigid rejection," where a general template (e.g., "I cannot fulfill this request") indiscriminately triggers refusals and severely undermines the naturalness of interactions between…

Why It Matters For Eval

Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on safety alignment to obey safe requests while refusing harmful ones.
However, traditional refusal mechanisms often lead to "rigid rejection," where a general template (e.g., "I cannot fulfill this request") indiscriminately triggers refusals and severely undermines the naturalness of interactions between…

Researcher Checklist

Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

No explicit human feedback protocol detected.
Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

No clear evaluation mode extracted.
Gap: Quality control reporting appears

No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.
Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.
Pass: Metric reporting is present

Detected: helpfulness

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