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Every now and then, someone claims to have been abducted by aliens.
时不时有人声称被外星人绑架。
You know about this. You're on the Internet.
这你是知道的，你在互联网时代。
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做。
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，一旦你开始看这些故事和它们的来源，你就会开始意识到，心理上可能会发生一些非常有趣的状况。
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无法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给无法解释的事情一个说法。
First, to be clear, experts have found that, on average, people who claim to have been abducted by aliens aren't any more likely to have a mental illness that changes their perception of reality.
首先要明确的是，专家们发现，一般来说，声称被外星人绑架的人不太可能患上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，有时记错充满戏剧性。
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：睡眠瘫痪。
This is kind of what it sounds like: You wake up in the middle of the night, but your body won't move. And not only that, but you're also prone to some pretty specific types of hallucinations.
听起来就是这样：你半夜醒来，但身体不能动。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
通常，人们会觉得房间里有一个充满威胁的入侵者，但他们也可能会有身体上的感觉，
— like pressure on their chests, difficulty breathing, or like they're floating around. Some people have even reported sensations of bliss.
比如胸口感到有压力，呼吸困难，或者像漂浮在水里一样。有些人甚至报告出现幸福的感觉。
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。醒来后就会消失，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.
但如果有人从没听说过睡眠麻痹，这可能是一个非常可怕的经历，很容易明白为什么他们需要对此作出解释。
And, at least in the West, there's a pretty obvious one. Like, if you wake up with a being looming over you,
而且至少在西方，有一个相当明显的例子。比如说，如果你醒来时，发现有东西在你身上若隐若现，
and you're terrified and spinning around like gravity doesn't matter…well, that sounds like our stories about aliens.
你会感到恐惧，像失去地心引力一样旋转。这听起来像是有关外星人的故事。
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，我可以进行详细描述”之间还是有一个相当大地飞跃。
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，当人们倾向于认同这些关于外星人的文化叙述时，这种飞跃就发生了。也许是因为他们想去相信，也许是因为有人问他们有针对性的问题。
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，说自己被外星人绑架了。并且可以对他们的经历创建虚假但详尽的记忆。
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《变态心理学期刊》中的一项研究。
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性的回忆和识别。
One group never claimed to have been abducted by aliens. The second claimed they had been, but they couldn't remember it.
一组人从未说过被外星人绑架。第二组说他们被绑架过，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.
第三组人也声称他们是被绑架的，但他们应该是在接受治疗后恢复的记忆。
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，研究人员给每个小组都播放一个单词列表，然后被分配一个简短的分散注意力的任务，阻止他们详述听到的内容。
After thirty seconds, they were asked to jot down all the words they could remember.
三十秒后，他们被要求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。这个列表中的单词，有一些是他们刚听到的，一些含义接近，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.
他们接受的挑战是看着这个列表，回忆并识别在实验开始时听到的单词。
The results showed that the group who claimed to remember their abductions was significantly worse at this.
结果显示，声称记得自己被绑架的那一组人在这一点上表现得明显更为糟糕。
They were more likely to misremember the original words they'd been played, often confusing them with similar words from the new list.
他们更容易记错原来听到的单词，经常把它们和新词表上相似的单词混淆。
What happened here was likely misattribution, or what the researchers called a source monitoring error.
这里发生的可能是错误归因，或者是研究人员所说的源监控错误。
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了这些词，但他们不记得是什么时候听到的。所以，他们认为这些词是在实验开始时播放的。
This study was small, but the authors suggest this kind of misattribution has a big role to play in the creation of false memories.
这项研究规模很小，但作者认为，这种错误归因在产生错误记忆方面起到了很大的作用。
For example, if someone is thinking back on their sleep paralysis experience and is wondering if it might have been aliens,
例如，如果有人回想他们睡眠麻痹的经历，并想知道那是否是外星人的话，
they could remember things that weren't there — like the flash of a creature they once saw in a movie.
他们可能会记住不存在的东西，就像他们曾在电影中看到的一闪而过的生物。
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是多么容易融入记忆之中，无论是从其他来源，还是通过引导性问题而来。
Like with other things in the field, more studies would help confirm this idea.
与其他领域的研究一样，进行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，这表明了这样一个事实：当我们试图解释为什么会有奇怪的事情发生在我们身上时，
our brains can propose explanations that aren't entirely true. And along the way, we can end up believing them.
我们的大脑可以给出并非完全正确的解释。在这个过程中，我们最终相信了这些事情。
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，但它们可以教会我们另一种生活：地球上人类的生活。
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奇怪的生命类型，你不需要再去回顾地球的历史。
Because millions of years ago, some strange stuff was walking around here.
因为几百万年前，有一些奇怪的东西在地球上游荡。
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，可以在CuriosityStream上查看《古代地球》第一季。
CuriosityStream is a subscription streaming service with more than twenty-four hundred documentaries and nonfiction titles.
CuriosityStream是一个订阅型流媒体服务，拥有超过2400部纪录片和非小说类视频。
They have content about psychology, biology, engineering, basically anything else you'd want to learn about.
内容涉及心理学、生物学、工程学等方面，基本上涵盖你想学的其它各种知识。
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."
如果你想了解更多，可以在curiositystream.com/psych上注册并使用促销代码“Psych”免费使用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美元就能获得不限次数的访问权，而且你还将一路支持科学秀。
