Strong, Bold, and Kind: Self-Control and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

We develop a model that relates self-control and conflict
identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. As
predicted, we find in a laboratory public goods experiment a robust
association between stronger self-control and higher levels of
cooperation. This means that there is evidence for an impulse to be
selfish and that cooperative behavior requires self-control effort.
Free-riders differ from other contributor types only in their
tendency not to have identified a self-control conflict in the
first place.