Self-awareness also provides a clue about where to find a plausible explanation for how moral hypocrisy is possible. That clue has to do with a particular form of self-deception (Batson et al. 1997: 1336, 1346, 1999: 526–527.). Rather than thinking that participants simply revised their fairness standards to make their behavior look acceptable in their own eyes, perhaps instead they were engaging (often unconsciously) in an act of self-deception whereby they avoided comparing their behavior to the relevant moral standards. If the two are kept apart from each other, that mitigates the perceived costs of not acting fairly while doing nothing to mitigate the perceived benefits of acting self-interestedly. But with increased self-awareness, the discrepancy between the fairness norm and the self-interested option was made especially salient so that it became psychologically difficult for many participants to employ this particular form of self-deception (Batson et al. 1999: 527, 529, 531–532, 2002: 331 and Batson and Thompson 2001: 55.).