Intermittent Reinforcement 

Recently in Psychology, we learned about different kinds of reinforcement, and how when you intermittently reinforce a behavior, the behavior will take longer to become extincted...

I always thought that if you sporadically reinforce a person's behavior, they would just stop that behavior and get the message. 

But that is not so. It actually INCREASES behavior.

This new discovery was relevant for a few reasons, but  mainly this one- I have been e-mailing this guy who is in the friend zone (but we all know how guys will do anything they can do get out of it...), and I wanted to make it known that we were only friends, and nothing more. So what did I do? I would sporadically send him e-mails, but he would still constantly write me! It made zero sense at first. If someone only gave you spontaneous attention, why would you keep trying? Why, because of the intermittent reinforcement principle, of course!