Tangible Temptation in the Social Dilemma: Cash, cooperation, and self-control

Kristian Ove R. Myrseth (), Gerhard Riener and Conny Wollbrant
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Kristian Ove R. Myrseth: ESMT European School of Management and Technology, Postal: Schlossplatz 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany

No 567, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: The social dilemma may contain, within the individual, a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and better judgment to cooperate. Examining the argument from the perspective of temptation, we pair the public good game with treatments that vary the degree to which money is abstract (merely numbers on-screen) or tangible (tokens or cash). We also include psychometric measures of self-control and impulsivity. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find in the treatments that render money more tangible a stronger positive association between cooperation and self-control—and a stronger negative association between cooperation and impulsivity. Our results shed light on the conditions under which self-control matters for cooperation.

Keywords: Self-control; Pro-social behavior; Public good experiment; Temptation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D03 D64 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2013-06-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://hdl.handle.net/2077/32944 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Tangible temptation in the social dilemma: cash, cooperation, and self-control (2013)
Working Paper: Tangible temptation in the social dilemma: Cash, cooperation, and self-control (2013)
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