Reconciling Pro-Social vs. Selfish Behavior - Evidence for the Role of Self-Control

Peter Martinsson, Kristian Ove R. Myrseth () and Conny Wollbrant
Additional contact information
Kristian Ove R. Myrseth: ESMT European School of Management and Technology

No 445, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: We test the proposition that individuals may experience a self-control conflict between short-term temptation to be selfish and better judgment to act pro-socially. Using a dictator game and a public goods game, we manipulated the likelihood that individuals identified self-control conflict, and we measured their trait ability to implement self-control strategies. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that trait self-control exhibits a positive and significant correlation with pro-social behavior in the treatment that raises likelihood of conflict identification, but not in the treatment that reduces likelihood of conflict identification.

Keywords: self-control; pro-social behavior; altruism; experiment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D03 D64 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010-05-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hap, nep-ltv, nep-neu and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published as Martinsson, Peter, Kristian Ove R. Myrseth and Conny Wollbrant, 'Reconciling Pro-Social vs. Selfish Behavior - Evidence for the Role of Self-Control' in Judgment and Decision Making, 2012, pages 304-315.

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0445

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jessica Oscarsson ().