  Cooperative behavior in real social dilemmas is often perceived as a
phenomenon emerging from norms and punishment. To overcome this paradigm, we
highlight the interplay between the influence of social networks on
individuals, and the activation of spontaneous self-regulating mechanisms,
which may lead them to behave cooperatively, while interacting with others and
taking conflicting decisions over time. By extending Evolutionary game theory
over networks, we prove that cooperation partially or fully emerges whether
self-regulating mechanisms are sufficiently stronger than social pressure.
Interestingly, even few cooperative individuals act as catalyzing agents for
the cooperation of others, thus activating a recruiting mechanism, eventually
driving the whole population to cooperate.
