Navigating the Shortcut Maze: A Comprehensive Analysis of Shortcut Learning in Text Classification by Language Models

AbstractLanguage models (LMs), despite their advances, often depend on spurious correlations, undermining their accuracy and generalizability. This study addresses the overlooked impact of subtler, more complex shortcuts that compromise model reliability beyond oversimplified shortcuts. We introduce a comprehensive benchmark that categorizes shortcuts into occurrence, style, and concept, aiming to explore the nuanced ways in which these shortcuts influence the performance of LMs. Through extensive experiments across traditional LMs, large language models, and state-of-the-art robust models, our research systematically investigates models’ resilience and susceptibilities to sophisticated shortcuts. Our benchmark and code can be found at: https://github.com/yuqing-zhou/shortcut-learning-in-text-classification.