Cubs Start their Season on a Familiar Foot

The Cubs started their season on a familiar foot, losing the season opener in Pittsburgh

 in 16 innings. But today they have one win to two losses. This may seem like two steps back and one step forward to most people but to a Cubs fan, like me, it’s the basic intermittent response theory that keeps me rooting for my favorite underdogs.

Making me stop being a Cubs fan would be a process of eliminating my fanhood by stopping the delivery of reinforcers responsible for maintaining the behavior. Intermittent reinforcement, winning and occasional game, makes extinguishing my fanhood slower or harder to accomplish. During a losing streak period, a being a fan is never reinforced. If the Cubs were continually on a winning streak, the fans will quickly notice this and lose interest pretty quickly when they start to lose. By contrast, if they win only intermittently then the fan (like me) grows accustomed to periods of no wins. If all wins are cut off the fan is less likely to notice that extinction is taking place, and more likely to persist with the behavior in the expectation that a winning streak or even just one win may resume again as it has in the past. The result is that fans of teams with a history of intermittent wins do not stop being fans as quickly as fans of teams with a history of continuous wins. Instead, they show resistance to being losers! That would be me.

Maybe I’m more like my mother than I thought I was. Looks like I’d best stay away from the nickel slots and just stick with the Cubs.