It depends on what you mean by selfish . If you mean inherently ONLY care for themselves , then you are simply wrong . If you mean selfish as in their interests are heavily weighted as a priority , yes . We humans are actually fairly empathetic creatures once we enter early adolescence . Empathy is an evolved trait within many social species and it is extremely beneficial to survival of your species . You can live your live fucking over the entire tribe but then they kill you or let you die out in the woods . Having no empathy in early tribes would be an easy death sentence as you don ' t really have a means of living entirely alone . Its taxing and mother nature is an absolute bitch . Without empathy , we humans could not cooperate on a large scale enough to have the civilization we do now . Think about how much you hated doing group projects in school because you disliked being forced to socialize . That behavior is antithetical to cooperationSociopathy is most definitely a thing and it mostly stems from a failing anterior insular cortex combined with external threats such as induced trauma .