A systematic testbed for evaluating emotion classification in large language models

Year 2025, Issue: 013, 1 - 19, 31.08.2025

Seda Nur Altun , Murat Dörterler

Abstract

The advent of large language models (LLMs) in the domain of natural language processing (NLP) has engendered novel opportunities for the resolution of intricate tasks, such as emotion classification. However, achieving effective emotion analysis with LLMs requires more than simply choosing a ready-made model. In addition, the implementation of specially designed prompt structures, the alignment of the model with tokenisers, the meticulous formatting of both input and output data, and the regulated management of the generation process are imperative. The present paper sets out a technically detailed, reproducible framework for zero-shot and few-shot emotion classification using generative LLMs. The objective of this study is not to assess the efficacy of a given model, but rather to furnish researchers with a comprehensive manual outlining the essential components necessary to construct an LLM-based emotion recognition system from its fundamental principles. Utilising the Meta-LLaMA3 8B Instruct model and the DailyDialog dataset, the study demonstrates that prompt engineering tailored to the purpose, vocabulary-compatible tokenisation strategies, logit-level output constraint mechanisms and structured output normalisation can enable accurate and interpretable emotion classification, even in environments with limited or no labels. The objective of this paper is to furnish a practical and adaptive resource on the construction of LLM infrastructures that are context-sensitive, resilient to class imbalances and suitable for flexible task-oriented applications.

Keywords

emotion classification , zero-shot learning , few-shot learning , large languale models

Project Number

This study was not supported by any specific research project.

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