How Interviewees Determine What Interviewers Want to Know

We examine the mechanisms by which interviewees in investigative interviews mentally organize information when deciphering what an interviewer wants to know. The overarching idea is that such a process stems from the extent to which an interviewer’s question specifies an objective. Our initial test (i.e., Neequaye & Lorson, 2023) suggested two competing mechanisms: High-specificity questions lead interviewees to focus on particularly relevant details to the exclusion of other information, while low-specificity questions make interviewees focus on a broader range of information items (Mechanism-1)—versus—Interviewees generally assume that interviewers want to know all the information at their disposal, irrespective of question specificity (Mechanism-2). We propose a programmatic research plan, including three studies, to ascertain which mechanism better captures how interviewees determine what interviewers want to know.