Step-Back Prompting
Also called abstraction prompting.
Step-back prompting has the model first answer a more general, abstract question about the underlying principle, then use that answer to reason about the original specific question.
Description
For a physics question, the step-back question might ask which law applies. Zheng et al. reported gains on science, multi-hop, and knowledge-intensive question answering.
Sources
- Zheng et al. (2023). Take a Step Back: Evoking Reasoning via Abstraction in Large Language Models.
Cite this entry
Protologue. (2026). Step-Back Prompting. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.0.0, PTL-0032). https://protologue.com/t/step-back-prompting/
BibTeX
@misc{protologue_step_back_prompting,
title = {Step-Back Prompting},
author = {{Protologue}},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques, v1.0.0},
note = {Entry PTL-0032},
url = {https://protologue.com/t/step-back-prompting/}
}