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Were you scared of the dark growing up?
小時候你害怕黑暗嗎？
Or maybe you still are!
也許現在你還是害怕！
It's not too uncommon for adults either.
對成年人來說，這并不稀奇。
When you're young, being afraid of the dark goes hand in hand with some other fears, like of ghosts, monsters, or other spooky things.
當你年輕的時候，對黑暗的恐懼和其他一些恐懼，比如對鬼魂、怪物或其他令人毛骨悚然的東西的恐懼，是相輔相成的。
And as you get older, you might not use that sort of explanation anymore.
隨著年齡的增長，你可能不會那樣解釋了。
But these irrational fears still stick around, because there are a lot of ways we learn to be afraid.
但是這些非理性的恐懼仍然存在，因為我們了解恐懼的方式有很多。
The good news is: research has found out that there are ways to fight those fears, too.
好消息是：研究發現了戰勝這些恐懼的方法。
The way we usually develop fears is a well-understood part of psychology.
通常，我們產生恐懼的方式從心理學上很容易理解。
Most of the time, it's through classical conditioning.
大多數時候都是通過經典條件反射。
This is when you pair a neutral stimulus — something that doesn't make you feel anything — with something that you have an automatic reaction to.
即把一種中立的刺激——一種不會讓你有任何感覺的事物——與一種你有自動反應的事物配對。
Like, imagine a person who's generally cool with dogs.
比如，想象一個對狗很冷淡的人。
But then, a dog bites her and she has to go to the hospital.
但是后來，一只狗咬了她，她不得不去醫院。
That'd make anybody freak out a bit.
那會讓任何人都有點抓狂。
Then, the neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus, which gives you the same automatic reaction.
然后，中性刺激會變成條件刺激，你會產生同樣的自動反應。
In other words, after that experience, this person is more likely to be afraid when she sees a dog.
換句話說，在這些經歷之后，這個人在看到狗的時候更有可能感到害怕。
Some phobias, which are extreme or irrational fears, can be caused by classical conditioning, including a fear of the dark.
有些恐懼癥是極端或非理性的恐懼，可以由經典條件反射引起，包括對黑暗的恐懼。
Research in animals and humans has found that conditioned responses are probably linked with the amygdala.
對動物和人類的研究發現，條件反射可能與杏仁核有關。
That's a brain region that becomes active when people are afraid, or have a lot of high-arousal emotions, like excitement and anger.
杏仁核指的是人們感到害怕，或者有高度情緒喚起，比如興奮和憤怒時，大腦變得活躍的區域。
So conditioned fears kind of make sense: they're based on something that happened to you.
所以條件性恐懼是有道理的：它們是基于在你身上發生的事情。
And some surveys have found that most children have had a bad experience with the thing they're scared of, like spiders or the dark.
一些調查發現，大多數孩子對于他們害怕的東西都有過不好的經歷，比如蜘蛛或黑暗。
But other phobias are of things that you've never actually experienced.
但是其他的恐懼癥是你從未經歷過的。
Like, arachnophobia is one of the top fears in the world, but most people haven't actually been attacked by spiders.
蜘蛛恐懼癥是世界上最可怕的恐懼之一，但是大多數人實際上并沒有被蜘蛛襲擊過。
Some survey results, including one sample of over 1,000 children and teenagers, suggest that we might learn these fears because of modeling.
對1000多名兒童和青少年的抽樣調查顯示，可以通過建模來了解這些恐懼。
Like, when your older brother sees a spider and freaks out, so you do too.
比如，當你的哥哥看到一只蜘蛛，嚇了一跳，你也一樣。
Or, where shark attacks are a huge threat, or a horror movie where the killer lurks in the darkness.
或者鯊魚襲擊，或者一部潛伏殺手的恐怖電影。
Even more common in that survey was learning through instructional fear acquisition — when someone tells you to be afraid of something.
在這個調查中，指導性恐懼（有人告訴你要害怕某件事）更常見。
This can happen if your mom warns you to watch out for snakes, or when news broadcasters talk about terrorist attacks,
如果你的媽媽警告你要小心蛇，或者當新聞廣播談論恐怖襲擊時，
even though the actual statistics say you're much more likely to die of something like a heart attack.
盡管實際數據顯示，你死于心臟病發作的可能性更大。
This is because people tend to use an availability heuristic in their reasoning, meaning they use what's readily available to their mind.
這是因為人們傾向于在使用可得性啟發法來推理，即，使用頭腦中隨時可用的東西。
It's hard to remember the exact statistics about terrorism and heart disease, but boy, that last story you saw on the news sticks with you.
關于恐怖主義和心臟病的確切數據很難記住，但是你對新聞上看到的最后一個故事印象深刻。
And it probably wasn't about a heart attack.
可能不是心臟病發作。
In fact, when researchers run studies and try to condition people to fear something neutral — like associating a certain tone with a mild shock —
事實上，當研究人員進行研究，并試圖讓人們對一些中性的事物產生恐懼——比如把某種特定的語氣與輕微的震驚聯系起來——
they're more successful if they tell people what to be afraid of beforehand.
如果他們事先說出害怕的事物，研究會更成功。
Now, across all these studies, some psychologists noticed a weird pattern: some phobias are easier to create than others in certain species.
現在，在所有這些研究中，一些心理學家注意到一個奇怪的模式：在某些物種中，某些恐懼癥比其他恐懼癥更容易產生。
For example, scientists have observed that it's easier for primates to develop a fear of snakes or spiders — but not of something like rabbits.
例如，科學家觀察到靈長類動物更容易對蛇或蜘蛛恐懼，而不是對兔子之類的東西恐懼。
They call this phenomenon biological preparedness.
他們稱這種現象為生物準備。
We can't say for sure why it happens, but one idea is that these fears are somehow ingrained from our ancestors' behaviors.
我們不能確定為什么會這樣，但有一種觀點認為，這些恐懼在某種程度上是源自我們祖先的行為。
Like, all mammals might be more wary around snakes and lizards, because the first mammals could've been eaten by ancient reptiles.
就像所有的哺乳動物可能對蛇和蜥蜴更加警惕，因為最早的哺乳動物可能被古代爬行動物吃掉。
Some ecologists looked into an evolutionary reason for fearing the dark, based on a risk from predators, by studying some regions of Tanzania where lion attacks are a threat to humans.
一些生態學家通過研究坦桑尼亞獅子襲擊對人類構成威脅的一些地區，根據食肉動物帶來的危險，研究人類害怕黑暗的進化原因
Using data from over two decades and over a thousand lion attacks, they found that most attacks occurred right after sunset,
根據20多年的數據和1000多起獅子襲擊事件，他們發現大多數襲擊發生在日落之后，
when it's dark but people are still wandering around.
天黑了，人們還在四處游蕩。
But they also found that attacks were up to four times more common in the ten days after a full moon than the period before, which is when the darkest part of the night is also right after sunset.
他們還發現，滿月后10天的攻擊頻率是之前的4倍，時間是在夜晚最黑暗的時候，也就是日落之后
So if that pattern of lions attacking humans in the dark was also true millennia ago,
所以獅子在黑暗中攻擊人類的模式在幾千年前也是正確的，
it's possible that some early humans became conditioned to fear the dark or the full moon.
有可能一些早期人類已經習慣于害怕黑暗或滿月。
Scientists have guessed that people might be predisposed to be afraid of the dark because we adapted to a risk of predator attacks.
科學家們猜測，人們可能更傾向于害怕黑暗，因為我們已經適應了捕食者攻擊的風險。
But this is one of the first studies suggesting that darkness actually increased that risk.
但這是最早的研究之一，它表明黑暗實際上增加了這種風險。
But it's worth taking these evolutionary hypotheses with a grain of salt.
但值得對其提出質疑。
It's not like anyone's run a study where they assigned some people to a lion-risk condition and others to a no-lion condition,
這不像任何人展開的研究：把一些人分到有獅子風險的組而另一些人分到沒有獅子的組，
and then waited for generations to see what fears develop.
然后等幾代，看恐懼會發展成什么。
So we've got a couple good ideas about where phobias come from.
所以我們對恐懼的原因有了一些很好的想法。
And if you have a phobia, psychologists have found ways to treat them.
如果你有恐懼癥，心理學家已經找到了治療的方法。
Many randomized trials show that one of the most effective treatments is called exposure therapy, which is essentially just conditioning in reverse.
許多隨機試驗表明，最有效的治療方法之一是暴露療法，本質上來說就是反向調節。
You slowly expose yourself to what you're afraid in small doses —
慢慢地把自己暴露在小劑量的恐懼中——
like turning off the light for five seconds, being in the same room as a spider, or meeting groups of strangers—
比如關燈五秒鐘，和蜘蛛呆在同一個房間，或者和一群陌生人見面
until you don't have a bad reaction anymore.
直到你不再有不良反應。
Then you move the spider a little closer, leave the lights out longer, or meet more people —
然后把蜘蛛移近一點，把燈關久一點，或者遇到更多的人
until the phobia has less power over you.
直到恐懼對你的影響減弱。
Now, fear is a really complicated thing.
現在，恐懼實際上是一件非常復雜的事情。
So if you love being scared by things like horror movies, check out our video about why psychologists think that happens.
如果你喜歡被恐怖電影之類的東西嚇到，看看我們的視頻，了解為什么心理學家會這么認為。
And if you want to keep learning about other brain things, you can go to youtube.com/scishowpsych and subscribe.
如果你想繼續學習關于大腦的其他知識，可以訪問youtube.com/scishowpsych并訂閱我們的節目。
