Corrected entry: At the beginning of Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman says that he studies the effects of negative reinforcement on ESP ability, when, in fact, he actually studies the effects of positive punishment on ESP ability. This can be seen in the fact that he adds an aversive stimulus to the subject when the subject "gets it wrong" in order to decrease that behavior, which is positive punishment. If he was studying negative reinforcement, he would have to make the shock occur at all times unless the subject guessed the right card, at which point, the shock would be removed. Of course, Peter's methods were shown to be less than sound.
jimba
26th Sep 2006
Ghostbusters (1984)
Correction: The shock isn't the only stimulus. He's is also either being overtly obvious that he's helping the woman OR could be that the stimulus is the woman getting all the right answers.
Or that Venkman is a hack and doesn't know the difference between negative reinforcement and positive punishment.
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Correction: The "negative reinforcement" occurs with the female subject. She sees that the punishment for getting a wrong answer is electric shock. When she gets the right answer (or so Venkman tells her) she escapes that aversive stimulus. *That* is negative reinforcement. The experiment is bunk anyway, because Venkman is lying to them both.
Phixius ★
You could just as easily say that she's receiving positive reinforcement because he keeps complimenting her. The only thing that's for sure here is that his experimental design and conduct has a faulty member is poor.