PersuasiveToM: A Benchmark for Evaluating Machine Theory of Mind in Persuasive Dialogues

Abstract: The ability to understand and predict the mental states of oneself and others, known as the Theory of Mind (ToM), is crucial for effective social scenarios. Although recent studies have evaluated ToM in LLMs, existing benchmarks focus on simplified settings (e.g., Sally-Anne-style tasks) and overlook the complexity of real-world social interactions. To mitigate this gap, we propose PersuasiveToM, a benchmark designed to evaluate the ToM abilities of LLMs in persuasive dialogues. Our framework contains two core tasks: ToM Reasoning, which tests tracking of evolving desires, beliefs, and intentions; and ToM Application, which assesses the use of inferred mental states to predict and evaluate persuasion strategies. Experiments across eight leading LLMs reveal that while models excel on multiple questions, they struggle with the tasks that need tracking the dynamics and shifts of mental states and understanding the mental states in the whole dialogue comprehensively. Our aim with PersuasiveToM is to allow an effective evaluation of the ToM reasoning ability of LLMs with more focus on complex psychological activities. Our code is available at https://github.com/Yu-Fangxu/PersuasiveToM.