Sheldon was trying to figure out how to “train” his roommate…

Sheldon was trying to figure out how to “train” his roommate’s girlfriend and stop her bad habits.  He hypothesized that if he gave Penny (the girlfriend) chocolate every time she was “behaving correctly”, the bad habits would disappear.  After several sessions of this chocolate reward training, Leonard (the roommate) caught on to what Sheldon was doing.  He said that he needed to stop trying to train Penny. What is the independent variable in this experiment?