Dual Mechanisms of Value Expression: Intrinsic vs. Prompted Values in Large Language Models

Large language models can express values in two main ways: (1) intrinsic expression, reflecting the model's inherent values learned during training, and (2) prompted expression, elicited by explicit prompts. Given their widespread use in value alignment, it is paramount to clearly understand their underlying mechanisms, particularly whether they mostly overlap (as one might expect) or rely on distinct mechanisms, but this remains largely understudied. We analyze this at the mechanistic level using two approaches: (1) value vectors, feature directions representing value mechanisms extracted from the residual stream, and (2) value neurons, MLP neurons that contribute to value vectors. We demonstrate that intrinsic and prompted value mechanisms partly share common components crucial for inducing value expression, generalizing across languages and reconstructing theoretical inter-value correlations in the model's internal representations. Yet, as these mechanisms also possess unique elements that fulfill distinct roles, they lead to different degrees of response diversity (intrinsic > prompted) and value steerability (prompted > intrinsic). In particular, components unique to the intrinsic mechanism promote lexical diversity in responses, whereas those specific to the prompted mechanism strengthen instruction following, taking effect even in distant tasks like jailbreaking.