Rhesa Glare Amor A.

Janubas Psy101
Reflection Paper 2
Teaching a dongsaeng to be good to her unnie1

I really have a problem with my little sister. She has a bad temper. She has a tendency to want to get
everyone’s attention that she gets extremely annoying even to the point of physically hurting us – her siblings and
our mom. More often than not, she misbehaves in the house and acts as if it is her territory. If she feels like
playing around, she’ll push me even if I don’t want to until I lose my patience. When I can no longer contain my
anger and finally explode, I start to yell at her; she’ll be very elated, laugh so hard, and run away excitedly
expecting that I’ll eventually chase her down and “punish” her for misbehaving. She gets what she wants. I lose
my patience then I chase her. She wins; she gets the attention she wants from me at the expense of my peaceful
living. Her misbehavior doesn’t end there. Even worse, she pinches me so hard leaving a mark on my skin and
sometimes even leaving a wound. Why do I have to suffer? Why do I have to feel the pain when in fact I did not
do anything wrong? To negatively reinforce myself from the consequences of my little sister’s misbehavior, I
should teach her how to behave the right way at least when she’s with me. At least somehow, she’ll stop pestering
me and simply let me live in peace.
How do I plan to do this? I noticed that she becomes so happy and stops bothering people every time
someone gives her a dress. Her happiness and choosing not to bother people seems to be an unconditioned
response to the unconditioned stimulus which is the dress. Having this in mind, I plan to use classical
conditioning to make her behave the way she should. I will tell her that we’re friends and since we are friends, I’ll
give her dress. Telling her that we are friends is the neutral stimulus and I pair it with the unconditioned stimulus -
the dress. I’ll do this several times until she associates the dress with the act of telling her that we are friends.
Telling her that we are friends becomes the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response is her not
bothering me. The next time she becomes hyper-active and starts misbehaving, I’ll simply tell her that we are
friends and she should not bother me anymore. When the conditioned response is strong enough, I’ll continue to
higher-order conditioning. The new neutral stimulus would be me calling her name. I’ll pair it several times with
telling her that we are friends until she eventually associates the calling of her name with telling her that we are
friends. The calling of her name then becomes the second conditioned stimulus. Her conditioned response would
be not to bother me. The only thing I need to do then when her hyperactivity sparks is to call her name and she
will be back to her normal self which is what I would expect from her.
I may also teach her proper behavior by using the dress as a reward every time she lets me live in peace.
I’ll tell her that I’ll buy her a dress as long as she stops pestering me. I will then buy her dress. My expectations
would be that she will be overjoyed by it and she’ll stop bothering me. I can’t buy her dress indefinitely as my
savings will be exhausted sooner or later; thus to lessen expenses, I will use variable interval schedule in
rewarding her for not bothering me. I will buy her dress after a week, then 10 days maybe then 6 days, depending
on my mood. If I’m feeling lucky, then maybe buy her dress after, say, 3 days. Because I’m using variable
interval schedule, hopefully, my little sister will not bother me because she’s expecting to receive a dress in return
but since I won’t give her one on a regular basis, she will keep on letting me live peacefully with high hopes that I
will finally give her the long-awaited reward.
I will be giving her punishments as well every time she becomes so pigheaded and will not do as I say.
She is actually immune already with ‘verbal punishments’. She is no longer affected by mere scolding. For
someone like her, a binding punishment by application would be letting her kneel on a small heap of mongo seeds
or rock salt. Kneeling on seeds or salt is quite painful [but not harmful] for a 5-year old child thus the pain should
be enough to convince her that it is useless not to submit to what I say. After all, I’m not demanding so much
from her. I only want my peace.
Naturally, my little sister will behave the way I want her to. As stated by the Law of Effect, if an action
(in this case proper behavior) is followed by a pleasurable consequence (the dress as reward), it will tend to be
repeated; and if an action (misbehaving) is followed by an unpleasant consequence (kneeling on seeds or salt), it
will tend not to be repeated.
If I will be able to properly execute my plans and the Law of Effect proves to be true in all cases, I will be
able to teach my younger sister how to behave properly; I should no longer have problems with my hyper-active
sister who does whatever she wants just to get attention. I will then forever have my hard-earned peace!

1
Dongsaeng is Korean word for younger sibling; unnie is Korean word for older sister.