Graph-Based Alternatives to LLMs for Human Simulation

arXiv:2511.02135v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have become a popular approach for simulating human behaviors, yet it remains unclear if LLMs are necessary for all simulation tasks. We study a broad family of close-ended simulation tasks, with applications from survey prediction to test-taking, and show that a graph neural network can match or surpass strong LLM-based methods. We introduce Graph-basEd Models for Human Simulation (GEMS) which formulates close-ended simulation as link prediction on a heterogeneous graph of individuals and choices. Across three datasets and three evaluation settings, GEMS matches or outperforms the strongest LLM-based methods while using three orders of magnitude fewer parameters. These results suggest that graph-based modeling can complement LLMs as an efficient and transparent approach to simulating human behaviors. Code is available at https://github.com/schang-lab/gems.