Updates are available Correction dated 2024-02-13

Article History

Received: 12 October 2021

Accepted: 31 May 2022

First Online: 22 June 2022

Change Date: 13 February 2024

Change Type: Correction

Change Details: A Correction to this paper has been published:

Change Details: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-024-01644-w

Declarations

:

: RP is the CEO of eHealth International, Inc. and owner and developer of the app used in the study. SG has no financial relationships or conflict of interest relevant to this article to disclose.

: Study procedures were approved by the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) Institutional Review Board.

: Written informed consent was obtained from the participants (and one parent or guardian if the participant were a minor).

: A succession of observational discussions on displacement activity, primarily in animals, appeared in the literature in the 1950s and 1960s.  Nevertheless, displacement theory was regarded as more of a curiosity than a useful concept and was never applied to human psychology, particularly treatment of clinical disorders. Nothing really new has appeared in the literature after about 1970.

: We applied displacement theory as a novel intervention for addiction, specifically eating addiction and obesity. We found that a majority of obese young people remarkably were able to identify their difficult life situations underlying displacement behavior and create compelling action plans to deal with each one. These results support subsequent development of an intervention for eating addiction and obesity based on displacement theory and implemented as a smartphone app with a clinical trial.