Kristina Suchotzki

Kristina Suchotzki is a professor at the University of Marburg, where she leads research in Psychological Legal Assessment. She completed her PhD at Ghent University (2010-2014) in the Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, focusing on "Optimising the detection of criminal intent and deception in criminal networks: The role of response inhibition." She joined the University of Würzburg in March 2015 before moving to her current position at Marburg. Her research focuses on lies, deception detection, and crime-related memory, combining approaches from legal psychology, cognitive psychology, and psychophysiology.

Suchotzki has made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of deception detection, particularly through reaction time-based methods and the Concealed Information Test (CIT). Her landmark 2017 meta-analysis of 114 studies (n = 3307) revealed a large standardized RT difference between lies and truths (d = 1.049), demonstrating that lying takes significantly more time than truth telling. Her alcohol studies produced notable findings: while alcohol facilitates detection of concealed identity information (2018), moderate intake showed no effect on CIT performance in a 2020 study. Her influential 2024 article "Detecting deception with artificial intelligence: promises and perils" in Trends in Cognitive Sciences cautioned that current AI approaches have focused on technical aspects at the expense of solid methodological and theoretical foundations.

Since September 2023, Suchotzki has served as Spokeswoman of the Legal Psychology section of the German Society for Psychology (DGPs), having previously been deputy representative for young members. She received the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology for contributions to research on deception across the lifespan, and won the Best Paper Award from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Würzburg for her 2017 meta-analysis. She maintains an active international research network, collaborating extensively with Matthias Gamer (University of Würzburg) and Bruno Verschuere, and is a member of professional organizations including the European Consortium of Psychological Research on Detection Deception (E-PRODD), the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL), and the Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Suchotzki's work bridges multiple disciplines, integrating cognitive psychology, psychophysiology, and legal psychology to understand deception mechanisms. Her research employs diverse methodologies including behavioral reaction time measures, autonomic psychophysiological measures (skin conductance, respiration, heart rate), event-related potentials, and eye-tracking. She has investigated the theoretical foundations of the CIT, exploring how different physiological measures reflect distinct cognitive mechanisms—with some reflecting orienting responses to significant information and others reflecting attempts to inhibit arousal. Her current DFG-funded Emmy Noether project examines cognitive and emotional processes underlying deception, advancing toward a comprehensive theory of lying behavior.