Marian Breland Bailey

Marian Breland Bailey, born Marian Ruth Kruse (December 2, 1920 – September 25, 2001) and nicknamed "Mouse",Clark, C. (2001)

. ''The Centre for Applied Canine Behaviour''. Retrieved on February 20, 2007. was an American psychologist, an applied behavior analyst who played a major role in developing empirically validated and humane animal training methods and in promoting their widespread implementation. She and her first husband, Keller Breland (1915–1965), studied at the University of Minnesota under behaviorist B. F. Skinner and became "the first applied animal psychologists." Together they wrote the book Animal Behavior which was first published in 1966, after Keller's death.

Childhood and education

Born to Christian and Harriet (Prime) Kruse, Marian Ruth Kruse grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Christian, a German immigrant, worked for an automotive supply store, and Harriet was a registered nurse.Bihm, E. M., & J. A. Gillaspy (2006)
Marian Breland Bailey (1920–2001)
''The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture''. Retrieved on March 10, 2007. Bailey's father and then others called her "''Maus''" ("mouse"), a common German nickname for little girls.Langley, A., & T. Wiebers (2007). Marian Breland Bailey (1920–2001). Paper presented at the annual Arkansas Undergraduate Research Conference. Henderson State University. Arkadelphia, Arkansas. ''Proceedings Journal of the Arkansas Undergraduate Research Conference''. After graduating from Washburn High School as her senior class's valedictorian,Gillaspy, J. A., & E. M. Bihm (2002). Obituary: Marian Breland Bailey (1920–2001). ''American Psychologist, 57'', pp. 292–293. Bailey went to the University of Minnesota to major in Latin and minor in Greek. Although financial times were difficult as her family had lost everything during the banking collapse of the Great Depression, a full scholarship and a Works Progress Administration award for writers supported her undergraduate education. Before long, she also became a research assistant for B. F. (Fred) Skinner.

To meet a science requirement, Bailey took psychology because, as she later explained, "I thought it the least painful science." As a straight-A student, she was recommended for a highly selective psychology class taught by Skinner (the first of what Skinner later called "pro-seminars"), under whom she studied along with George Collier, W. K. Estes, Norman Guttman, Kenneth MacCorquodale, Paul Everett Meehl, and others bound for later fame in their field. With its emphasis on Skinner's new operant training techniques, the course inspired Bailey to major in psychology with a minor in child psychology and to study operant conditioning.Woolf, L. M. (2002)
Marian Breland Bailey: December 2, 1920 – September 25, 2001
. ''Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society''. Retrieved on September 20, 2007.

Bailey worked as Skinner's teaching and laboratory assistant when he published his pivotal work ''The Behavior of Organisms'' in 1938. She trained rats for Skinner, typed lecture notes for him, proofread his book, and even babysat his children. Skinner gave her the final galley proof of his book, which she considered a prized possession. While still an undergraduate student, Bailey met her future husband Keller Breland, who came to call her "Mouse" without knowing that her family called her "''Maus''". Bailey and others soon decided that her name was Mouse.

In 1940, Bailey joined Psi Chi, the national honor society in psychology.Wiebers, T. (2004)
Dr. Marian Breland Bailey: A Psi Chi Tribute
. ''Eye on Psi Chi'' 9 (1), 24–25. Retrieved on September 20, 2007. She graduated with her bachelor of arts degree ''summa cum laude'' in 1941,Cramer, C. (2000)
A pioneer for humane methods in teaching animals
(PDF) ''Main Connection, 8'' (1), p. 8. the only member of her graduating class with an A average.

Work with Keller Breland

After Bailey earned her bachelor's degree, she married psychologist Keller Bramwell Breland (1915–1965) on August 1, 1941. Together, they had three children: Bradley (1946), Frances (1948), and Elizabeth (1952).

Bailey became the second graduate student to work under the renowned Skinner. Her husband soon came to work with Skinner as well.Gillaspy, J. A., & E. M. Bihm (July 16, 2007)
Keller Bramwell Breland (1915–1965)
''The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture''. Retrieved on September 20, 2007. While graduate students, they collaborated with Skinner on military research during World War II. Their work involved training pigeons for use by the U.S. Navy, teaching the birds to guide bombs. This was never actually used. Although many sources incorrectly refer to the work as Project Pigeon or the Pigeon Project, Bailey assured colleagues that its name had actually been "Pigeon in a Pelican", with ''pelican'' referring to the missile each pigeon was to guide.

Bailey and Breland saw the commercial possibilities of operant training. So they left the University of Minnesota without completing their doctorates, and founded Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE) on a farm in Minnesota. Skinner tried to dissuade the couple from abandoning their graduate education for an untested commercial endeavor. Classmate Paul Meehl bet $10 they would fail. (His 1961 check for $10 later hung framed on Bailey's office wall.)

ABE's first project was training farm animals to appear in feed advertisements for General Mills. Bailey and Breland went on to train "more animals and different species of animals than any other animal trainers" of their time, including animals of the land (cats, cattle, chickens, dogs, goats, pigs, rabbits, raccoons, rats, and sheep), the air (ducks, parrots, and ravens), and the sea (dolphins and whales). At their busiest, they trained "more than 1,000 animals at a given time".Yin, S. (August 2000)
Advanced Chicken Training Camp
''Cambridge Center of Behavioral Studies''. Retrieved on September 18, 2007. In training animals for recreational facilities such as Marineland of Florida, Parrot Jungle, SeaWorld, and Six Flags, they created the very first dolphin and bird shows, a form of program now considered traditional entertainment fare. Most major theme parks' animal programs can be traced back to the couple's pioneering work. They also established the first coin-operated animal shows. The Buck Bunny commercial featured their trained rabbits for a Coast Federal Savings television ad that ran for twenty years and which still holds the record for longest running TV commercial advertisement.Cook-Hasley & Wiebers (1999)
Marian Breland Bailey: A Pioneer in the History of Applied Animal Psychology
. ''Henderson State University''. Retrieved on September 19, 2007. They trained animals for many other venues including circuses, motion pictures, museums, stores, and zoos.

Earlier animal trainers had historically relied primarily on punishment when teaching animals. Bailey and Breland instead followed Skinner's emphasis on the use of positive reinforcement to train animals, using rewards for desired behavior.Fishkoff, S. (November 4, 1999)
Pecking order: Whatever happened to the chickens who worked the tic-tac-toe game on Cannery Row?
''Montery County Weekly''. Retrieved on March 9, 2007. Although other students of Skinner's later entered commercial animal training as well, the pair's techniques dominated the field because they found ways to simplify the training of complex behaviors.Bailey, R. (2002)
Click for Joy!
''clickertraining.com''. Foreword and Introduction. Retrieved on September 20, 2007. The couple did not just train the animals. They also trained other animal trainers, establishing in 1947 "the first school and instruction manual for teaching animal trainers the applied technology of behavior analysis." Marlin Perkins of ''Wild Kingdom'' and Walt Disney were among those who learned from them.

Bailey led ABE's government research, some of which remains classified to this day. Known projects included the development of an avian ambush detection system. In 1950, Bailey and Breland relocated ABE to a farm near Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1955, they opened the "I.Q. Zoo" in Hot Springs as both a training facility and a showcase of trained animals. "Popular acts included chickens that walked tightropes, dispensed souvenirs and fortune cards, danced to music from jukeboxes, played baseball and ran the bases; rabbits that kissed their (plastic) girlfriends, rode fire trucks and sounded sirens, and rolled wheels of fortune; ducks that played pianos and drums; and raccoons that played basketball."

Bailey and Breland were also "the first to introduce the public to the applied technology of behavior analysis via numerous personal appearances at fairs, exhibitions, and theme parks across the country". They appeared on well known television shows such as ''The Today Show'', ''The Tonight Show'', ''Wild Kingdom'', and ''You Asked For It''. Publications including '' Colliers'', ''Life'', ''Popular Mechanics'', ''Reader's Digest'', ''Saturday Evening Post'', ''Time'', and even ''The Wall Street Journal'' featured them and their work. Although Breland was often the public face of ABE with some ads referring to "Keller Breland's I.Q. Zoo," both of them collaborated equally in ABE's endeavors.

The couple stirred controversy among behaviorists with their 1961 article, "The misbehavior of organisms"the title of which involved a play on words referring to Skinner's ''The Behavior of Organisms''. Bailey and Breland outlined training difficulties in which instinct or instinctive drift might occur as tendencies biologically inherent in a species intrude into the behaviors a trainer was attempting to teach an animal. The article is recognized as a milestone in the history of psychology.

In 1963, Bailey designed and implemented a program to improve techniques for working with profoundly mentally retarded individuals at a human development center in Alexandria, Louisiana. She emphasized the value of positive reinforcement, and taught ward attendants humane practices that became the standard for institutions of this kind. The 1965 training manual ''Teaching the Mentally Retarded'', which she and others prepared, remained in use for decades.

On June 16, 1965, Breland died of a heart attack. In their 1966 textbook, Bailey described him as the "dreamer" and herself as the "engineer". She continued writing, researching, and training animals.

Work with Bob Bailey

In 1976, she married Robert (Bob) E. Bailey. He had been the first Director of Training in the Navy's Marine Mammal Program, then became ABE's General Manager. The two of them had founded the facility "Animal Wonderland" in 1972. Among their many activities, the Baileys worked with the Canine Companions for Independence nonprofit organization which trained dogs to assist disabled individuals. Together, the Baileys trained animals from over 140 species.

Bailey's graduate studies had stopped when she and Breland left to found ABE. She returned to graduate school and earned her Ph.D. in psychology at the University of Arkansas in 1978. She then served as a professor of psychology at Henderson State University from 1981 until her retirement in 1998. During these years, the Baileys produced educational films on topics such as the history of behaviorism. Their film work included ''The History of Behavioral Analysis Biographies'', the ABE documentary ''Patient Like the Chipmunks'', and ''An Apple for the Student: How Behavioral Psychology Can Change the American Classroom''.

Bailey continued writing about the "misbehavior" of animals during operant conditioning for publications such as ''American Psychologist'', the official journal of the American Psychological Association (APA). The Baileys were chief among the behaviorists who began using the Internet for instruction, problem solving, and promotion of their science.

In 1996, the Baileys began the Bailey & Bailey Operant Conditioning Workshops, which provided training to animal trainers, psychologists, students, and many others from throughout the world.Bailey, R. E. (2003). A gentle woman for all seasons. ''Division 25 Recorder, 36'' (1), 1, pp. 4–5. The program of study involved four increasingly advanced levels of the "physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding" workshops. In 1998, the University of Arkansas inducted Bailey into the university's Fulbright College Alumni Academy as one of their first Distinguished Alumni Award recipients.

On September 25, 2001, Bailey died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Hot Springs.

Remembering Mouse

After Bailey's death, numerous professionals in the field recognized her death with obituaries and biographies. Dr. Art Gillaspy and Dr. Elson Bihm of the University of Central Arkansas wrote an obituary for the ''American Psychologist''. Psi Chi's journal '' Eye on Psi Chi'' honored Bailey, who had been a member for over sixty years, with a biography by Dr. Todd Wiebers of Henderson State. The year after her death, the ''Arkansas Historical Quarterly'' featured a retrospective on Bailey, who had been a figure in the state of Arkansas for decades. Her husband Bob provided a biographical tribute for the ''Division 25 Recorder'', the official publication of the APA's Division 25 for Behavior Analysis. Other obituaries and biographies have appeared online.

In her name, Henderson State University presents the Marian Breland Bailey Endowed Scholarship in Psychology to select psychology undergraduates. Memorial contributions in Bailey's memory go to this scholarship and to the Arkansas Kidney Foundation.

Bailey's husband Bob continued to teach seminars they developed and the Bailey & Bailey Operant Conditioning Workshops which they began together.

The Archives of the History of Psychology in Akron, Ohio, and the Smithsonian Math and Science Museum in Washington, D.C., now house collections of Bailey's documents and items.The National Science Foundation awarded Dr. Elson Bihm a grant to help preserve historical documents related to ABE and the I.Q. Zoo (January 23, 2004).
Bihm receives grant to preserve psychology materials
'. ''UCA Today''. Retrieved on September 20, 2007.

References

External links

Behavior by Bailey

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, Marian Breland
American women psychologists
20th-century American psychologists
Behaviourist psychologists
University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts alumni
University of Arkansas alumni
Henderson State University faculty
Animal trainers
Works Progress Administration workers
2001 deaths
1920 births
20th-century American women
American women academics