{"ID":2826582,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18803","arxiv_id":"2512.18803","title":"Quantifying the Lifelong Impact of Resilience Interventions via Agent-Based LLM Simulation","abstract":"Establishing the long-term, causal impact of psychological interventions on life outcomes is a grand challenge for the social sciences, caught between the limitations of correlational longitudinal studies and short-term randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This paper introduces Large-Scale Agent-based Longitudinal Simulation (LALS), a framework that resolves this impasse by simulating multi-decade, counterfactual life trajectories. The methodology employs a \"digital clone\" design where 2,500 unique LLM-based agent personas (grounded in a curated corpus of 3,917 empirical research articles) are each cloned across a 2x2 factorial experiment. Specifically, the simulation models the efficacy of extended psychological resilience training (Intervention vs. Control) either in childhood or as a young adult (age 6 vs. age 18). Comparing digital clones enables exceptionally precise causal inference. The simulation provides a quantitative, causal estimate of a resilience intervention's lifelong effects, revealing significant reductions in mortality, a lower incidence of dementia, and a substantial increase in accumulated wealth. Crucially, the results uncover a crucial developmental window: the intervention administered at age 6 produced more than double the positive impact on lifetime wealth compared to the same intervention at age 18. These benefits were most pronounced for agents from low-socioeconomic backgrounds, highlighting a powerful buffering effect. The LALS framework serves as a \"computational wind tunnel\" for social science, offering a new paradigm for generating and testing causal hypotheses about the complex, lifelong dynamics that shape human capital and well-being.","short_abstract":"Establishing the long-term, causal impact of psychological interventions on life outcomes is a grand challenge for the social sciences, caught between the limitations of correlational longitudinal studies and short-term randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This paper introduces Large-Scale Agent-based Longitudinal Simu...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18803","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.18803v1","authors":"[\"Vivienne L'Ecuyer Ming\"]","published":"2025-12-21T16:51:22Z","proceeding":"cs.CY","tasks":"[\"cs.CY\",\"cs.MA\"]","methods":"[\"Large Language Model\"]","has_code":false}