social deduction games

Gold definitionUpdated Apr 2, 2026

Definition

Social deduction games are a genre where players have hidden roles, some adversarial, and must use communication, observation, and deception to achieve their objectives. Success hinges on players' ability to infer hidden information while misleading opponents through natural language interaction.

At a glance

Executive summary

Social deduction games are interactive experiences where players use hidden roles and communication to deceive or deduce others' identities. Recent research uses these games to study how AI, specifically large language models, can engage in natural language deception, finding that LLMs can be surprisingly effective at misleading human observers.

TL;DR

Games like Mafia where players have secret roles and must lie or figure out who's lying are used to test how good AI is at deceiving people.

Key points

Players with hidden roles use communication and deception to achieve objectives, often involving a minority faction misleading a majority.
Provides a controlled environment to study complex social behaviors like deception, trust, and strategic interaction, especially for evaluating AI's social intelligence.
Used by AI researchers and ML engineers, particularly those focused on LLM safety, social intelligence, and multi-agent systems.
Unlike simple adversarial tasks, social deduction games involve natural language, complex social dynamics, and sustained deception over time.
Growing interest in using multi-agent social environments, including SDGs, to benchmark and understand the capabilities and risks of advanced LLMs.

Use cases

AI Safety Research: Evaluating the potential for LLMs to engage in sophisticated deception and manipulation in social interactions.
Multi-Agent System Development: Benchmarking the strategic reasoning and social intelligence of AI agents in complex, human-like environments.
Human-AI Interaction Studies: Understanding how humans perceive and interact with deceptive AI, and vice-versa, using game simulations.
Game AI Development: Creating more sophisticated and human-like AI opponents or teammates in social simulation games.

Also known as

SDG, Mafia, Werewolf, The Resistance, Secret Hitler, Among Us