Baseline A03

• Milgram's Baseline: Evaluation Points

  • Low internal validity
  • Hofling (1966) experiment in psychiatric hospital
  • High external validity
• Milgram's Baseline: Low Internal Validity

  Milgram's baseline experiment was criticised for not actually testing obedience and demand characteristics may have been there. Participants may have guessed that the shocks were not real, and therefore their behaviour wasn't. This shows participant bias.
• Milgram's Baseline: High External Validity

  Milgram's experiment highlights the importance of the relationship between a naive participant and an authority figure. Milgram also argued that being in a lab environment, it accurately reflects wider situations of authority relationships in real life.
• Milgram's Baseline: Hofling (1966)


  In 1966, Hofling conducted a study on 22 nurses working in a psychiatric hospital. They were told over the phone to administer 20mg of medication to patients even though they knew that the lethal dose of that medication was 10mg. 21 out of 22 nurses obeyed the instruction but were stopped before it could be administered. When later interviewed, the nurses said that they usually received orders from doctors over the phone who typically got annoyed when questioned.