不知道同学们有没有这样的体验：
看到超级可爱的小狗或者小猫咪，或者看到一个很乖很可爱的小朋友，就会不自觉的从内心深处发出一声尖叫：
“好可爱啊，好想抱抱它……咬一口它的小屁股，捏捏他的耳朵……”
等一下，好像有哪里不太对？
你有没有想过这样一个问题：既然我们这么喜欢可爱的事物，为什么还要去咬他一口、甚至有种想要掐死它的冲动呢，细思恐极啊……
难道太喜欢一个人，就会想要欺负他（她）吗？没错！
其实，这就是一些心理科学家研究所得的一种心理 "cute aggression"（萌系侵略性），即看到可爱的事物就会有把它掐死的冲动，虽然最后并不会付诸行动。
如果你也曾经有这样的冲动，那么就随我一起来深入了解一下这个有趣的冷知识吧！
When Too Cute Is Too Much,
The Brain Can Get Aggressive
当一件事物过于可爱时，
大脑就会产生侵略性！
Researchers say human brains can become overwhelmed by cute traits, such as large eyes and small noses, embodied by movie characters like Bambi.
The holiday season is all about cute. You've got those ads with adorable children and those movies about baby animals with big eyes.
研究人员们表明，人类的大脑会被一些可爱的特征而击溃到一败涂地，比如大大的眼睛、小小的鼻子，具体表现在像小鹿斑比这样的动画电影角色。在这个充斥着各种节假日的季节里，到处都是可爱的事物。你可以看到有着可爱孩子的广告，还有一些关于拥有着大大眼睛的动物幼崽的电影。
But when people encounter too much cuteness, the result can be something scientists call "cute aggression."
但是当人们遇到太多可爱的事物时，其结果就有可能演变成科学家们口中所说的“萌系侵略性”。
People "just have this flash of thinking: 'I want to crush it' or 'I want to squeeze it until pops' or 'I want to punch it,' " says Katherine Stavropoulos, a psychologist in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Riverside.
加州大学河滨分校教育研究生院的心理学家凯瑟琳·斯塔夫罗普洛斯说，人们“只是会产生这样的一种想法：‘我想把它压扁’或‘我想把它挤碎到爆浆’或‘我想把它锤爆’。”（这脑内活动也太残忍了点儿……）
About half of all adults have those thoughts sometimes, says Stavropoulos, who published a study about the phenomenon in early December in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. But those people wouldn't really take a swipe at Bambi or Thumper, she says.
斯塔夫罗普洛斯说，大约有一半的成年人都会偶尔产生这样的想法；她于12月初在《行为神经科学前沿》上发表了一项关于这种现象的研究。但她同时也强调，这些人不会真的对小鹿斑比或桑普进行攻击。
"When people feel this way, it's with no desire to cause harm," Stavropoulos says. The thoughts appear to be an involuntary response to being overwhelmed by a positive emotion.
斯塔夫罗普洛斯说：“当人们有这种感受时，他们实际上并不想伤害它们。”这些想法似乎是大脑因为被一种积极性的情绪压倒，而作出的不自觉的反应。
Cute aggression is often baffling and embarrassing to the people who experience it. Stavropoulos says they think, "This is weird; I'm probably the only one who feels this way. I don't want to hurt it. I just want to eat it."
萌系侵略性通常会让经历过这样情绪的人感到困惑和尴尬。根据斯塔夫罗普洛斯的说法，这些人通常会认为“这很奇怪；我也许是唯一一个有这种感觉的人。我其实并不想伤害它，可我就是想要吃掉它。”
Cute aggression was first described by researchers at Yale University several years ago. But Stavropoulos, a cute aggressor herself, wanted to know what it looked like in the brain.
几年前，耶鲁大学的研究人员已经首次描述了“萌系侵略性”这种现象。但是斯塔夫罗普洛斯作为一个“萌系侵略性”的体验者，很想知道它在大脑中到底是什么样子的。
So she and a colleague recorded the electrical activity in the brains of 54 young adults as they looked at images of animals and people.
因此，她和一位同事在54名年轻人观看动物和人的图片时，记录了他们大脑中的脑电活动。
The images included both grown-ups and babies. Some had been manipulated to look less appealing. Others were made extra adorable, meaning "big cheeks, big eyes, small noses — all these features we associate with cuteness," Stavropoulos says.
这些照片包括成年人和婴儿。有些人被故意设计地并没有那么有吸引力。而其他的则特别可爱，这意味着“胖嘟嘟的脸颊，大大的眼睛，小小的鼻子——所有这些特征都让我们联想到可爱，”斯塔夫罗普洛斯说。
The study found that for the entire group of participants, cuter creatures were associated with greater activity in brain areas involved in emotion. But the more cute aggression a person felt, the more activity the scientists saw in the brain's reward system.
而这个研究发现，对于所有参加实验的人们来说，更可爱的生物与他们大脑中和情感有关的更活跃的区域联系在了一起。但是当一个人的萌系侵略性的感受越强，科学家们在大脑奖赏系统（与代表兴奋、欣喜的多巴胺相关）中看到的脑内活动就越多。
That suggests people who think about squishing puppies appear to be driven by two powerful forces in the brain. "It's not just reward and it's not just emotion," Stavropoulos says. "Both systems in the brain are involved in this experience of cute aggression."
这表明，那些想要压扁小狗的人似乎同时受到了大脑中两种强大力量的影响。“这不仅仅是奖赏效应（人们在高兴时发出的兴奋性冲动），也不仅仅是情感，”斯塔夫罗普洛斯说。“大脑中的这两个系统都参与了这种萌系侵略体验。”
The combination can be overwhelming. And scientists suspect that's why the brain starts producing aggressive thoughts. The idea is that the appearance of these negative emotions helps people get control of the positive ones running amok.
这两者的结合可能是压倒性的。科学家们怀疑这就是大脑开始产生攻击性思维的原因。也就是说，这些负面攻击性情绪的出现，其实是在帮助人们平衡（因为被萌到导致的）积极情绪的失控状态。
"It could possibly be that somehow these expressions help us to just sort of get it out and come down off that baby high a little faster," says Oriana Aragón, an assistant professor at Clemson University who was part of the Yale team that gave cute aggression its name.
克莱姆森大学助理教授奥莉安娜·阿拉贡说:“这可能是因为这些萌系侵略性心理能帮助我们把情绪表达出来，从而让我们从被婴儿萌到的情感中平复下来。”
Aggressive thoughts in response to adorable creatures are just one example of "dimorphous expressions of positive emotion," Aragón says.
阿拉贡说，对可爱的动物产生过激的反应，只是“积极情绪的双重表达”的一个例子。
