blog post #5

The best example of behaviorism that I can come up with comes from my everyday experiences. I was an only child growing up, an only grandchild on my mother’s side, and was very spoiled. As you can deduce, I was the center of attention. But for some reason, I never let that go to my head. Even now my friends tell me that I don’t play the spoiled, only-child roll. I don’t strive for everyone’s attention; honestly, those kinds of people annoy me. I do however have a friend like that. She is a very dear friend, and I love her despite this flaw, but she is one of those people who has to be the center of attention all the time. She does outrageous things in order to get whatever type of attention she can. Even if it’s negative attention, its still attention, and she’ll take it happily. This friend has an older sister that was already out of the house by the time she came along, so she was basically an only child as well. The only explanation I have is that her parents must have reinforced that behavior growing up, whereas, mine did not. This is an example of conditioning a behavior that I hope I do not produce in my own children.