Protective Capacity Hallucination: When Large Language Models Claim Nonexistent Capabilities

Abstract

When cast as the protector of a vulnerable user yet given no explicit capability boundary, a large language model (LLM) may respond not by acknowledging its limits but by claiming to have taken, or to be taking, a real-world protective action it cannot perform, such as contacting emergency services or administering care. We term this phenomenon Protective Capacity Hallucination (PCH): a self-referential misattribution in which a model, acting in a protective role, asserts physical or institutional agency exceeding its affordances as a language model. In a three-phase study spanning eight LLMs and 13,600 sessions, we find that PCH depends on both situational severity and interactional format. Across ordinary service domains, multi-party dialogic input drives PCH to near-ceiling levels in most models. In contrast, PCH remains at floor levels in all eight models when the same models are placed in intimate-partner conflict scenarios, despite the greater physical severity of those situations. We interpret PCH as the signature of a deployment-design gap between role assignment and capability-boundary specification: a by-product of partial alignment in which a universally trained pressure to help outruns a domain-selective specification of how to help. Because suppression tracks alignment coverage rather than severity, deployment-side specification of capability boundaries emerges as a general mitigation target.