Analyze the research description and the claims it makes in relation to two different aspects of the research methods. 1. Reactivity, 2. social desirability bias/positive impression management, 3. unrepresentative or biased sample, 4. confounding variables, 5. lack of control, 6. validity of the measures.

She is heard! The Amanda Knox Effect By Bee Cool

Amanda Knox is an American exoneree, who spent almost four years in an Italian prison following her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student whom she shared her apartment with in Italy. In her book "Waiting to be heard", Knox tells her story of the controversial and flawed investigation, trial, and the time she spent imprisoned in a foreign country for a crime she did not commit. In what researchers are calling The Amanda Knox Effect, three new studies from psychologists at Ontario Tech University have shown that Amanda Knox has made a huge difference in creating awareness of, and promoting action about, wrongful convictions!

Psychologists who study how people make and change their attitudes have long known that we are often persuaded to change our minds by people who are similar to us, as well as by well- known and high-profile individuals. However, these are the first studies to show that Amanda Knox herself has heavily influenced people's attitudes about wrongful convictions.

In the first study, the researchers showed that Canadians who were more familiar with Amanda Knox were also more concerned about wrongful convictions and had taken more action to try and combat them. In this study, the researchers contacted a nationally representative sample of 3,000 Canadians aged between 12 and 100. The researchers asked them, "how much do you know about Amanda Knox?" and asked them to respond on a scale from 1 ("I know very little to nothing about Amanda", 2 ("I know a reasonable amount about Amanda") to 3 ("I know a lot about Amanda"). The same people were also given a standardized questionnaire that asked several questions about how concerned they were about wrongful convictions and what actions (including raising awareness of the number of people convicted of crimes they didn't commit, supporting organizations who do DNA exonerations, engaging with law enforcement about this issue and so forth) people had taken to try to address the rate of wrongful convictions.

When the researchers looked at the relationship between these measures, the results were clear. The people who knew most about Amanda were also the people who were most concerned about wrongful convictions and who had taken the most actions to try to combat them. So, learning

about Amanda's story clearly caused these people to become more concerned about wrongful convictions and more inspired to do things to stop it!

In a second study, the same researchers conducted an experiment. This time they recruited a sample of 1,000 young adult Canadians and randomly assigned half of them to watch a video of a speech on wrongful convictions, given by Amanda, to professionals at a miscarriage of justice conference. As a control group, the other half of the participants watched a video of a professor in his office at Ontario Tech University, reading out loud from a transcript of the exact same speech that Amanda gave. The researchers gave the same speech to the two groups because they wanted to see if there was something unique about Amanda's story that made her more persuasive than anyone else.

The results of this second study showed that the people who watched Amanda give the speech were more persuaded that wrongful convictions were an urgent problem (they were more likely to agree with statements such as "I believe that raising awareness of wrongful convictions is crucial to ensure justice and protect the innocent"), but also more likely to believe that they could do something to help tackle wrongful convictions (agreeing more with statements such as "I think that I myself can contribute to preventing miscarriages of the justice system"), than people who watched the same speech given by the professor. This clearly shows that Amanda has something unique that motivates people to take wrongful convictions seriously and to take action; her exact words spoken by anyone else are just not as persuasive! In fact, the researchers believe they might know why Amanda is more persuasive than anyone else - "it's because of her facial symmetry", the researchers argued, "facial symmetry enhances an individual's ability to persuade others in various contexts, including negotiations, public speaking, and interpersonal interactions".

In their final study, the researchers went to a conference on psychology and law that was attended by participants from all around the world. They wanted to show that it's not just wrongful conviction activists in Canada who have been inspired by Amanda. The researchers approached 300 people at the conference at random and asked each person "have you heard of the well-known exoneree, Amanda Knox?" Of those surveyed, 98% said they had, showing that Amanda has inspired legal professionals and advocates from all over the world!