Science News

A study conducted five years ago received a lot of attention when it seemed to reveal that babies have an innate moral compass, that people are inherently good and that society is not responsible for the fact that the majority of us do not flagrantly break laws on a daily basis. Now, new research has come out that calls that into question. While it does not go so far as The Onion article that describes children as sociopaths, the study states that the researchers may have read a bit too far into babies' natural preferences.

These are the “culture-bound syndromes”: mental illnesses that psychiatrists officially acknowledge occur only within a particular society.

Depending on whom you ask, the notion that some cultures have their own ways of going crazy is either the ultimate in cultural sensitivity or the ultimate in Western condescension. (...) To these critics, *the very notion of a “culture-bound illness” is an outdated relic from the days of European empires*.