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Were you scared of the dark growing up?
小时候你害怕黑暗吗？
Or maybe you still are!
也许现在你还是害怕！
It's not too uncommon for adults either.
对成年人来说，这并不稀奇。
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.
当你年轻的时候，对黑暗的恐惧和其他一些恐惧，比如对鬼魂、怪物或其他令人毛骨悚然的东西的恐惧，是相辅相成的。
And as you get older, you might not use that sort of explanation anymore.
随着年龄的增长，你可能不会那样解释了。
But these irrational fears still stick around, because there are a lot of ways we learn to be afraid.
但是这些非理性的恐惧仍然存在，因为我们了解恐惧的方式有很多。
The good news is: research has found out that there are ways to fight those fears, too.
好消息是：研究发现了战胜这些恐惧的方法。
The way we usually develop fears is a well-understood part of psychology.
通常，我们产生恐惧的方式从心理学上很容易理解。
Most of the time, it's through classical conditioning.
大多数时候都是通过经典条件反射。
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.
即把一种中立的刺激——一种不会让你有任何感觉的事物——与一种你有自动反应的事物配对。
Like, imagine a person who's generally cool with dogs.
比如，想象一个对狗很冷淡的人。
But then, a dog bites her and she has to go to the hospital.
但是后来，一只狗咬了她，她不得不去医院。
That'd make anybody freak out a bit.
那会让任何人都有点抓狂。
Then, the neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus, which gives you the same automatic reaction.
然后，中性刺激会变成条件刺激，你会产生同样的自动反应。
In other words, after that experience, this person is more likely to be afraid when she sees a dog.
换句话说，在这些经历之后，这个人在看到狗的时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.
有些恐惧症是极端或非理性的恐惧，可以由经典条件反射引起，包括对黑暗的恐惧。
Research in animals and humans has found that conditioned responses are probably linked with the amygdala.
对动物和人类的研究发现，条件反射可能与杏仁核有关。
That's a brain region that becomes active when people are afraid, or have a lot of high-arousal emotions, like excitement and anger.
杏仁核指的是人们感到害怕，或者有高度情绪唤起，比如兴奋和愤怒时，大脑变得活跃的区域。
So conditioned fears kind of make sense: they're based on something that happened to you.
所以条件性恐惧是有道理的：它们是基于在你身上发生的事情。
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.
一些调查发现，大多数孩子对于他们害怕的东西都有过不好的经历，比如蜘蛛或黑暗。
But other phobias are of things that you've never actually experienced.
但是其他的恐惧症是你从未经历过的。
Like, arachnophobia is one of the top fears in the world, but most people haven't actually been attacked by spiders.
蜘蛛恐惧症是世界上最可怕的恐惧之一，但是大多数人实际上并没有被蜘蛛袭击过。
Some survey results, including one sample of over 1,000 children and teenagers, suggest that we might learn these fears because of modeling.
对1000多名儿童和青少年的抽样调查显示，可以通过建模来了解这些恐惧。
Like, when your older brother sees a spider and freaks out, so you do too.
比如，当你的哥哥看到一只蜘蛛，吓了一跳，你也一样。
Or, where shark attacks are a huge threat, or a horror movie where the killer lurks in the darkness.
或者鲨鱼袭击，或者一部潜伏杀手的恐怖电影。
Even more common in that survey was learning through instructional fear acquisition — when someone tells you to be afraid of something.
在这个调查中，指导性恐惧（有人告诉你要害怕某件事）更常见。
This can happen if your mom warns you to watch out for snakes, or when news broadcasters talk about terrorist attacks,
如果你的妈妈警告你要小心蛇，或者当新闻广播谈论恐怖袭击时，
even though the actual statistics say you're much more likely to die of something like a heart attack.
尽管实际数据显示，你死于心脏病发作的可能性更大。
This is because people tend to use an availability heuristic in their reasoning, meaning they use what's readily available to their mind.
这是因为人们倾向于在使用可得性启发法来推理，即，使用头脑中随时可用的东西。
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.
关于恐怖主义和心脏病的确切数据很难记住，但是你对新闻上看到的最后一个故事印象深刻。
And it probably wasn't about a heart attack.
可能不是心脏病发作。
In fact, when researchers run studies and try to condition people to fear something neutral — like associating a certain tone with a mild shock —
事实上，当研究人员进行研究，并试图让人们对一些中性的事物产生恐惧——比如把某种特定的语气与轻微的震惊联系起来——
they're more successful if they tell people what to be afraid of beforehand.
如果他们事先说出害怕的事物，研究会更成功。
Now, across all these studies, some psychologists noticed a weird pattern: some phobias are easier to create than others in certain species.
现在，在所有这些研究中，一些心理学家注意到一个奇怪的模式：在某些物种中，某些恐惧症比其他恐惧症更容易产生。
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，科学家观察到灵长类动物更容易对蛇或蜘蛛恐惧，而不是对兔子之类的东西恐惧。
They call this phenomenon biological preparedness.
他们称这种现象为生物准备。
We can't say for sure why it happens, but one idea is that these fears are somehow ingrained from our ancestors' behaviors.
我们不能确定为什么会这样，但有一种观点认为，这些恐惧在某种程度上是源自我们祖先的行为。
Like, all mammals might be more wary around snakes and lizards, because the first mammals could've been eaten by ancient reptiles.
就像所有的哺乳动物可能对蛇和蜥蜴更加警惕，因为最早的哺乳动物可能被古代爬行动物吃掉。
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.
一些生态学家通过研究坦桑尼亚狮子袭击对人类构成威胁的一些地区，根据食肉动物带来的危险，研究人类害怕黑暗的进化原因
Using data from over two decades and over a thousand lion attacks, they found that most attacks occurred right after sunset,
根据20多年的数据和1000多起狮子袭击事件，他们发现大多数袭击发生在日落之后，
when it's dark but people are still wandering around.
天黑了，人们还在四处游荡。
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.
他们还发现，满月后10天的攻击频率是之前的4倍，时间是在夜晚最黑暗的时候，也就是日落之后
So if that pattern of lions attacking humans in the dark was also true millennia ago,
所以狮子在黑暗中攻击人类的模式在几千年前也是正确的，
it's possible that some early humans became conditioned to fear the dark or the full moon.
有可能一些早期人类已经习惯于害怕黑暗或满月。
Scientists have guessed that people might be predisposed to be afraid of the dark because we adapted to a risk of predator attacks.
科学家们猜测，人们可能更倾向于害怕黑暗，因为我们已经适应了捕食者攻击的风险。
But this is one of the first studies suggesting that darkness actually increased that risk.
但这是最早的研究之一，它表明黑暗实际上增加了这种风险。
But it's worth taking these evolutionary hypotheses with a grain of salt.
但值得对其提出质疑。
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,
这不像任何人展开的研究：把一些人分到有狮子风险的组而另一些人分到没有狮子的组，
and then waited for generations to see what fears develop.
然后等几代，看恐惧会发展成什么。
So we've got a couple good ideas about where phobias come from.
所以我们对恐惧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.
如果你有恐惧症，心理学家已经找到了治疗的方法。
Many randomized trials show that one of the most effective treatments is called exposure therapy, which is essentially just conditioning in reverse.
许多随机试验表明，最有效的治疗方法之一是暴露疗法，本质上来说就是反向调节。
You slowly expose yourself to what you're afraid in small doses —
慢慢地把自己暴露在小剂量的恐惧中——
like turning off the light for five seconds, being in the same room as a spider, or meeting groups of strangers—
比如关灯五秒钟，和蜘蛛呆在同一个房间，或者和一群陌生人见面
until you don't have a bad reaction anymore.
直到你不再有不良反应。
Then you move the spider a little closer, leave the lights out longer, or meet more people —
然后把蜘蛛移近一点，把灯关久一点，或者遇到更多的人
until the phobia has less power over you.
直到恐惧对你的影响减弱。
Now, fear is a really complicated thing.
现在，恐惧实际上是一件非常复杂的事情。
So if you love being scared by things like horror movies, check out our video about why psychologists think that happens.
如果你喜欢被恐怖电影之类的东西吓到，看看我们的视频，了解为什么心理学家会这么认为。
And if you want to keep learning about other brain things, you can go to youtube.com/scishowpsych and subscribe.
如果你想继续学习关于大脑的其他知识，可以访问youtube.com/scishowpsych并订阅我们的节目。
