Displacement Activity

你是否有过这样的经历：眼看考试或某个任务、活动的大限将至，自己很是担心，可你却不是在努力准备，而是看电影、玩游戏或者和朋友聊天？ 至少对于我，这样的矛盾行为并不罕见。今天才知道，这种行为叫做Displacement Activity，是人和动物身上的一种普遍存在的行为。

Displacement Activity貌似还没有确切的中文翻译，有在线词典译作“替换行为”，个人认为翻译不准确，不予采纳。根据我的理解，Displacement Activity就是当你不得不去做某件事情的时候，你担心会失败于是产生一种不去做的消极心态，当你无法做出一个做还是不做的决定时，纠结中你下意识得选择逃避——不由自主的做一些让自己感觉舒服（但很明显不在状态）的事情，比如吃饭、看电影、睡觉、玩游戏、逛街等等。恰恰由于你的逃避，往往会使事情办的更糟，所以等到下一个你不得不面对的抉择时，你的这种表现会更严重，由此造成恶性的循环往复……

个人感觉Displacement Activity还是心理不够强大的表现。真的强者不会有这种表现的。悲哀的是这种状态已伴随我十几年，至少在高中时就有这种表现，目前看来已经越来越严重了。我能想到的解决这种现象的根本方法就是：1. 深入研究你要做的事情，搞清楚你要做什么，想清楚怎么做，多看一些别人成功的经验（以及别人失败的教训，当然这种东西比较少了）；2. 制定一个达到目标所需要的可行的计划；3. 每天坚持执行你的计划；4. 尽量不要调整你的计划。这只是一个设想，目前本人还没有真正实践过。

下面是搜集的相关解释。

Displacement Activities are behaviors that animals(including human beings) have conflicting drives. Such behaviors are completely out of place.

Displacement behavior is usually thought of as self-grooming, touching, or scratching, which is displayed when an animal has a conflict between two drives, such as the desire to approach an object, while at the same time being fearful of that object.With the fall of drive theory into disfavor, animal behaviorists paid little attention to displacement behavior until Maestripieri et al. (1992) pointed out that displacement behavior might be a good measure of anxiety levels.

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From Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_activity

A displacement activity is the result of two contradicting instincts in a particular situation.Birds, for example, may peck at grass when uncertain whether to attack or flee from an opponent; similarly, a human may scratch his or her head when they do not know which of two options to choose.

Displacement activities often involve actions to bring comfort such as scratching, drinking or feeding.

The first description of a displacement activity (though not the use of the term) is probably by Julian Huxley in 1914. The subsequent development of research on displacement activities was a direct consequence of Konrad Lorenz's works on instincts. However, the first mentions of the phenomenon came in 1940 by the two Dutch researchers Nikolaas Tinbergen and Adriaan Kortlandt.

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Fromhttp://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DisplacementActivity

Activity undertaken when some more important task's deadline is looming.

When I was studying for my final degree examinations I played more bridge than ever before. That was pretty much a pure DisplacementActivity.

I'm wondering how much other authors and programmers suffer from this weakness -- SteveHolden

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Fromhttp://baillement.com/displacement-delius.html

In 1940 Tinbergen and Kortlandt independently drew attention to a behavioural phenomenon which has since been called displacement activity and has received a good deal of attention. Although no binding rules exist by which displacement behaviour can be recognized, the term is applied to behaviour patterns which appear to be out of context with the behaviour which closely precedes or follows them either in the sense that they do not seem functionally integrated with the preceding or following behaviour or that they occur in situations in which causal factors usually responsible for them appear to be absent or at least weak compared with those determining the behavioural envelope.

Displacement activities occur in three situations: motivational, conflict, frustration of consummatory acts and physical thwarting of performance.Several theories have been put forward to explain the causal mechanism involved. A variety of behaviour patterns have been reported as displacement activities, even in a single species, but this variety needs revision.

Monographie treatments of the behaviour of any one species usually indicate only two or three activities which according te the judgment of the observer occur commonly as displacement. None of the theories on displacement activities gives cogent reasons why particular behaviour patterns should be more common than others as displacement activities, apart from stating that the causal agents which usually elicit them in non-displacement situations can also be presumed te be present, if only weakly, in the displacement context, or remarking that those patterns are prepotent in the repertoire of the animal.