Threats capture attention. Self-control may help individuals to regulate attention away from threats and toward rewards. We hypothesized that when rewarding and threatening stimuli compete for attention, high self-control capacity (as a state and as a trait) would enable reward bias. Participants completed a measure of trait self-control, exercised (versus did not exercise) self-control on an unrelated task, and then completed a dot-probe task consisting of image pairs that were quickly replaced by a dot on one side of the screen. We quantified reward bias as quicker reaction times to the location of the dots replacing rewarding versus threatening images. Higher trait self-control related to reward bias, but only in the no depletion condition. The results suggest that individuals high in trait self-control spontaneously orient attention toward rewarding stimuli when threatening stimuli compete for attention, and that this tendency relies on self-regulatory resources.