NormGym: Evaluating Normative Competence through Social Interaction

arXiv:2611.08613v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Normative competence, the ability to infer socially enforced expectations from interaction and adjust behavior accordingly, is essential for agents operating in unfamiliar human communities. Yet existing evaluations largely test whether agents can recognize or apply norms they may already know, rather than whether they can acquire previously unknown norms from social interaction. We introduce NormGym, an interactive benchmark for normative competence in which a newcomer must infer a hidden, arbitrary norm while pursuing its own task in a multi-agent community. Success requires distinguishing what is possible from what is permitted, inferring the norm from observed behavior and sanctions, and applying it in new situations.