Prompt-Conditioned Self-Referential Output Patterns in Large Language Models: A Provenance-Bounded, Cross-Platform Output-Level Case Study Under Recursive Moral Prompting

Abstract

Exploratory, provenance-bounded output-level case study. AI-assistance disclosure: large language models were used, under the author's direction and review, for drafting/editing assistance, literature search and bibliographic verification, and (where applicable) research-engineering of governed pipelines; in the empirical SROP studies LLMs additionally appear as the subject of study and (in the qualification study and the mechanistic negative result) as measurement instruments, as described in each paper's Methods. No AI system is an author; the human author bears sole responsibility for content. Version notes: retitled from the 2026-04-29 deposit; ESNI framing and pooled confirmatory ACBP statistics withdrawn; exploratory, provenance-bounded output-level case study; content = the 2026-08-29/30 revision.