Comparative Evidence for Llm Social Agents And Multimodal Executive Agents: Comparative Methods and Boundary Conditions

Abstract

Research spanning LLM social agents and multimodal executive agents increasingly joins methods that were developed for different objects and decisions. Here, a realistic benchmark centered on persistent LLM-based social-media agents is compared with a paired text-only and multimodal benchmark for constrained executive decision tasks to determine which claims can travel across those boundaries and which remain context dependent. A structured reading of two target studies and 12 verified companion references is conducted across five lenses: behavioral realism, memory, interaction effects, safety, benchmark validity. Emphasis is placed on the provenance of evidence, the comparability of baselines, and the consequences of alternative explanations. Comparison reveals recurring trade-offs among behavioral realism, memory, and interaction effects. These trade-offs do not support a universal ranking; instead, they identify the operating envelope within which each method remains credible and the perturbations most likely to expose fragile conclusions. The contribution is a decision-oriented synthesis that connects method selection to failure cost and treats reproducibility, provenance, and bounded generalization as first-order design requirements.