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Humans are intuitively cooperative. Humans are also capable of deliberation, which includes social comparison, self-reflection and mental simulation of the future. Does deliberation undermine or sustain cooperation? Some studies suggest that deliberation is positively associated with cooperation, whereas other work indicates that deliberation (vis-à-vis intuition) impairs cooperation in social dilemmas^,. Do some aspects of reasoning qualify whether deliberation sustains cooperation or impairs it? Here, we propose that wise reasoning^–—that is, taking a bigger-picture perspective of the situation, including sensitivity to temporal and social interdependence between events—helps to integrate self-protective and cooperative goals, thereby sustaining cooperation when deliberating. Study 1 demonstrated that individual differences in wise reasoning about personal conflicts moderated the impact of naturalistic and …