Sassy: Reducing My Level Of Sassiness

For my behavioural modification assignment I chose to reduce my level of sassiness. According to Dictionary.com (2015) sassiness or to be sassy means a person is sarcastic, funny, and occasionally blunt but very charming at the same time. The word sassy has recently reached its climax in popularity, although it is often negatively affiliated with strong feminist woman. Many celebrities are known for their sassy replies, for instance, Rihanna. The word sassy is relatively new, its origin is unknown but it gained popularity during the 1830’s. Sassy has several implications; 1) to describe a person, 2) to say a sassy remark or 3) to describe an object as being sassy/bold. For the purpose of this essay I solely studied and recorded my sassy remarks.
Business dictionary.com states that a baseline data is used to establish a basis of the behaviour in order to compare data. It is extremely effective in testing programmes in order to identify a change in response. As seen in the diagram my average amount of sassiness is 15.5. My maximum sassy comments during the baseline period was on Thursday 27th of August; a total of 20 sassy remarks whereas my minimum amount of sassy comments was on Tuesday 25th of August. Based on the data my sassy comments are quite varied over the week, peaking during the middle of the week then levelling off during the end and early beginning. This is likely due to causes that trigger an influence in my behaviour; commonly known as antecedents (Merriam-Webster, 2015). Antecedents are factors that may have caused an increase or decrease in my behaviour; for example: Friday has a very low amount of sassy comments and therefore could be related to fact that it’s the end of the week. Whereas the peak on Thursday might have been influenced by stress as typically Wednesdays and Thursdays are my busiest university days. Hence, it is possible the days of the week modify my target behaviour. Furthermore, controlling consequences are events that occur subsequently to the behaviour (Viner, and Macfarlane, 2005). For example, people who elicit a positive response from my sassy comment, therefore reinforces my target
To decrease my behaviour I used the Fordyce Operant Conditioning Model which associates a behaviour to its consequences. Positive punishment is the administration of an unpleasant stimulus in order to decrease the behaviour (Gazzaniga, Heatherton, Halpern, and Heine, 2006). In my case I wore a rubber band around my wrist and flicked it when I spoke a sassy remark. The flicking of the rubber band onto my wrist causes a quick, temporary stinging sensation, in the hopes of associating my sassy comments to pain. I will need to be careful that the flicking of the rubber band does not leaves marks or is too painful, therefore alternating wrists will decreases that likelihood. I chose this punishment as it had been previously successful in my old nail-biting habit. I believe this positive punishment to be strong as I am not able to tolerate pain very well. In addition Gazzaniga, M. S., Heatherton, T. F., Halpern, D. F., & Heine, S. J. (2006), also highlighted the use of negative punishment as a way of learning. Notably, the removal of a pleasant stimulus enhances the likelihood of my sassy remark behaviour decreasing. With regards to this, I chose to increase the number of running laps around Auckland Domain from three to five on the days when I said more than twelve sassy remarks. I thought running would be a successful punishment as I am not