Pekka Santtila

Pekka Santtila is Professor of Psychology at NYU Shanghai and a Global Network Professor at NYU. A legal psychologist, he studies how to improve the quality of investigative interviews. His group develops AI-driven training with child, witness, and suspect avatars and explores real-time, explainable AI support for question formulation during interviews. His most recent findings suggest that a fine-tuned AI-model ASQ (AI Supported Questioning) outperforms trained human specialists in formulating open and context-relevant questions in a child sexual abuse interviewing task.

Previously, Professor Santtila served as Professor of Applied Psychology and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology at Åbo Akademi University (Finland). He has advised police, consulted child sexual abuse investigations, and served as an expert witness in numerous cases. He is a licensed psychologist and a certified specialist in legal psychology in Finland.

Select Publications

• Pompedda, F., Zhang, Y., Haginoya, S., & Santtila, P. (2022). A mega-analysis of the effects of feedback on the quality of simulated child sexual abuse interviews with avatars. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 37(3), 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-022-09509-7
• Zhang, Y., Segal, A., Pompedda, F., Haginoya, S., & Santtila, P. (2022). Confirmation bias in simulated child sexual abuse (CSA) interviews: Abuse assumption influences interviewing and decision-making processes. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 27(2), 314–328. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12213
• Haginoya, S., Ibe, T., Yamamoto, S., Yoshimoto, N., Mizushi, H., & Santtila, P. (2023). AI avatar tells you what happened: The first test of using AI-operated children in simulated interviews to train investigative interviewers. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1133621. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1133621
• Segal, A., Bakaitytė, A., Kaniušonytė, G., Ustinavičiūtė-Klenauskė, L., Haginoya, S., Zhang, Y., Pompedda, F., Žukauskienė, R., & Santtila, P. (2023). Associations between emotions and psychophysiological states and confirmation bias in question formulation in ongoing simulated investigative interviews of child sexual abuse. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1085567. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1085567
• Santtila, P., Sun, Y., Järvilehto, L., Antfolk, J., Haginoya, S., Pakkanen, T., Lamb, M. E., & Korkman, J. (in preparation). From training to real-time support: Fine-tuned AI steers question suggestions toward invitations and wh- questions in a child sexual abuse interviewing task. Manuscript in preparation.

Education

• PhD, Psychology
  Åbo Akademi University, Finland
• MSc, Investigative Psychology
  University of Liverpool, UK
• MA, Psychology
  Åbo Akademi University, Finland