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Every now and then, someone claims to have been abducted by aliens.
时不时就有人声称被外星人绑架。
You know about this. You're on the Internet.
你知道这些，因为你可以上网找到。
Considering we don't have any substantial evidence of life beyond Earth, almost everyone tends to dismiss these claims, but… hear me out… maybe we shouldn't.
考虑到我们没有任何关于地球以外生命的确凿证据，几乎每个人都倾向于否认这些说法，但是，听我说，也许我们不应该这样。
Because, once you start looking at these stories and where they come from, you begin to realize that there might be something really interesting happening here psychologically.
因为，当你开始看这些故事和它们的来源时，便开始意识到心理上可能会出现一些非常有趣的变化。
Ultimately, researchers don't believe these claims can tell us anything about life in space. But they can tell us how our brains try to explain the unexplainable.
最终，研究人员认为这些说法不能告诉我们任何有关太空生命的信息。但是，它们能告诉我们大脑是如何试图解释这些不解之谜的。
First, to be clear, experts have found that, on average, people who claim to have been abducted by aliens
首先，要明确一下，专家们发现，一般来说，声称被外星人绑架的人
aren't any more likely to have a mental illness that changes their perception of reality.
不太可能患有改变他们对现实看法的精神疾病。
Instead, supposed "encounters" might be a result of a common psychological phenomenon: false memories.
相反，所谓的“邂逅”可能是一种常见的心理现象：错误的记忆。
Essentially, someone has a weird experience, and then they misremember it — sometime that misremembering is dramatic.
从本质上说，有人有过奇怪的经历，然后他们会记错，有时记错会很戏剧性。
That experience can vary, but these days, researchers tend to focus on one: sleep paralysis.
这种经历可能会有所不同，但现在，研究人员倾向于关注一个问题：睡眠性麻痹。
This is kind of what it sounds like: You wake up in the middle of the night, but your body won't move.
听起来就是这样：你半夜醒来，但身体无法移动。
And not only that, but you're also prone to some pretty specific types of hallucinations.
不仅如此，你还容易产生一些特殊类型的幻觉。
Often, people feel there's a threatening intruder in their room, but they might also feel bodily sensations — like pressure on their chests, difficulty breathing, or like they're floating around.
通常，人们会觉得房间里有个具有威胁的入侵者，但他们也可能会产生身体的感觉，比如胸口有压力、呼吸困难，或像漂浮在水里一样。
Some people have even reported sensations of bliss.
有些人甚至报告出现过极乐的感觉。
This all probably happens when normal parts of sleep, like paralysis and dreaming, don't wear off once you wake up, so it's usually not anything to worry about.
这一切都有可能发生在睡眠的正常部分，比如瘫痪和做梦，你醒来后它们就没有了，所以通常不用担心。
But if someone has never heard of sleep paralysis, this could be a really scary experience, and it's easy to see why they'd need an explanation for it.
但如果有人从来没听说过睡眠性麻痹，这就可能是个非常可怕的经历，很容易明白为什么需要给它们做解释。
And, at least in the West, there's a pretty obvious one.
而且，至少在西方，有一个相当明显的例子。
Like, if you wake up with a being looming over you, and you're terrified and spinning around like gravity doesn't matter…well, that sounds like our stories about aliens.
比如说，如果你醒来时发现有一个生物在你身上若隐若现，你会感到恐惧，像地心引力一样旋转。这听起来像是我们关于外星人的故事。
Still, there's a pretty big jump between "I woke up feeling weird" and "I woke up on a spaceship, which I can describe in detail.
尽管如此，在“我醒来时感觉很奇怪”和“我在宇宙飞船上醒来，我可以详细地描述”之间还是有相当大的差异的。
Researchers believe this jump happens when people lean into those cultural narratives about ET — maybe because they want to believe, or maybe because someone asks them targeted questions.
研究人员认为，当人们倾向于相信这些关于外星人的文化叙述时，就会发生这种情况。也许是因为他们想相信，或是因为有人向他们询问有针对性的问题。
In any case, they can end up convincing themselves they were abducted by aliens, and can construct detailed, false memories of their experience.
在任何情况下，他们最终都可以说服自己，他们被外星人绑架了，并可以对他们的经历构建出详细、虚假的记忆。
There's even some evidence to back this up — like a 2002 study from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.
甚至有一些证据支持这一点，比如2002年《变态心理学杂志》的一项研究。
In it, researchers compared false recall and false recognition among three groups.
在这项研究中，研究人员比较了三组人的错误回忆和错误识别。
One group never claimed to have been abducted by aliens. The second claimed they had been, but they couldn't remember it.
一个小组从未说过被外星人绑架，第二个小组声称他们曾被绑架过，但记不起来了。
And the third also claimed they were abducted, but they had supposedly recovered their memories after something like therapy.
第三个小组也声称遭遇绑架，但据说他们在接受治疗后恢复了记忆。
In the experiment, each group was played a list of words, then were given a short distraction task to stop them rehearsing what they heard.
在实验中，研究人员给每组播放一个单词列表，然后实施一个分散注意力的简短任务来阻止他们背诵听到的内容。
After thirty seconds, they were asked to jot down all the words they could remember.
三十秒后，要求他们把所有能记住的单词都写下来。
Next, everyone was presented with another list of words — some they had just heard, some that had similar meanings, and some that were brand-new.
接下来，每个人都会看到另一个单词列表。其中一些词是他们刚刚听到的，一些具有类似的含义，还有一些是新词。
Their challenge was to look at this list and recall and recognize the words they'd been played at the beginning of the experiment.
他们的挑战是看着这个列表，回忆并识别在实验开始时看过的那些单词。
The results showed that the group who claimed to remember their abductions was significantly worse at this.
结果显示，声称记得自己遭遇绑架的那组人表现明显更糟。
They were more likely to misremember the original words they'd been played, often confusing them with similar words from the new list.
他们更容易记错最初播放的单词，经常把它们和新列表上相似的单词混淆。
What happened here was likely misattribution, or what the researchers called a source monitoring error.
这里所发生的很可能是归因错误，或者研究人员称之为源头监控错误。
These participants had probably heard those words at some point, but they couldn't remember when — so they assumed they'd been played during the beginning of the experiment.
这些参与者可能在某个时候听到过这些词，但他们不记得是什么时候，所以他们认为这些词在实验开始时曾播放过。
This study was small, it is not easy to find a bunch of people who is willing to participate in your experiment and who remember being abducted by aliens,
这项研究规模很小，很难找到一帮人愿意参与实验，他们还记得被外星人绑架，
but the others suggest this kind of misattribution has a big role to play in the creation of false memories.
但其他人认为这种错误归因在错误记忆的产生中发挥着很大的作用。
For example, if someone is thinking back on their sleep paralysis experience and is wondering if it might have been aliens,
例如，如果有人在回想他们出现的睡眠性麻痹经历，并想知道是否是外星人，
they could remember things that weren't there — like the flash of a creature they once saw in a movie.
他们可能记住那些不在现场的东西，比如曾在电影中看到的生物的闪光。
Other studies about eyewitness testimony have reached similar conclusions, too.
其他关于目击者证词的研究，也得出了类似的结论。
They've highlighted just how easily events that didn't happen can be incorporated into memories, either from other sources, or by leading questions.
他们强调了那些没有发生的事情非常容易就可以融入记忆，无论是从其他来源，还是通过引导性问题。
Like with other things in the field, more studies would help confirm this idea.
与其他领域的研究一样，更多的研究将有助于证实这一观点。
But ultimately, this points to the fact that, when we're trying to explain why weird things happen to us,
但归根结底，这表明了一个事实：当我们试图解释发生在我们身上的一些离奇事件时，
our brains can propose explanations that aren't entirely true. And along the way, we can end up believing them.
大脑可以提出并非完全正确的解释。最终，我们会去对它们信以为真。
So while these stories can't teach us much about ET, they can teach us about another kind of life: the human kind, here on Earth.
所以，虽然这些故事不能教会我们太多关于外星人的知识，但它们可以让我们了解另一种生命：地球上的人类。
If all this talk of aliens has gotten you wanting to learn about weird kinds of life — you do not need to look any further than Earth's past.
如果所有这些关于外星人的讨论让你想了解怪异的生命类型，你只需回顾地球的过去。
Because millions of years ago, some strange stuff was walking around here.
因为几百万年前，有一些奇怪的生物在这里游荡。
And if you want to see some of it for yourself, you can check out the first season of Ancient Earth on CuriosityStream.
如果你想亲眼看看其中的一些，可以在CuriosityStream上观看《古代地球》第一季。
CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service with more than twenty-four hundred documentaries and nonfiction titles.
CuriosityStream是一个订阅流媒体服务，拥有超过2400部纪录片和纪实性视频。
They have content about psychology, biology, engineering, basically anything else you'd want to learn about.
他们有关于心理学、生物学、工程学等内容的节目，基本上你可以找到其它任何想了解的知识。
If you want to learn more, you can check them out free for thirty-one days if you sign up at curiositystream.com/psych and use the promo code "Psych."
想了解更多信息，可以在curiositystream.com/psych上注册并使用促销代码“psych”免费观看31天。
After that, you can get unlimited access for just $2.99 a month — and you'll be supporting SciShow along the way.
之后，每月只需花费2.99美元，就能获得无限访问权，而且你还能一路支持科学秀节目。
