PART 2 Criticisms of the classic study Martin Orne & Charles Holland (1968) claimed that the research lacked experimental realism, meaning that the experimental set-up was simply not believable. They thought the participants realised that the electric shocks were not real because powerful electric shocks were not a believable punishment for making a mistake on a word-pair test. Thus, the research lacked internal validity, as the obedience was not a genuine effect. Orne & Holland claimed the participants were just playing along to please the experimenter – demand characteristics. They based this on Holland’s (1967) replication of Milgram’s experiment, in which he found afterwards that 75% of the participants did not believe the deception. However, Milgram argued the participants’ stress reactions contradict this, indicating they were so caught up in the situation it seemed real to them, meaning the study did have experimental realism. Additionally, in the post-experimental interview the participants were asked to rate how painful they thought the last few shocks they administered were to the learner on a scale of 1 (‘not at all painful’) to 14 (‘extremely painful’). The mode of the results was 14, with a mean of 13.42. Assuming the participants were answering honestly, they clearly believed they were seriously… Read More