How is it really possible for these participants to pull off this combination? In particular, it is one thing to appear to be acting morally to others. But these participants are also appearing to be moral to themselves too. How are they able to downplay the costs associated with guilt, regret, and hypocritical behavior for acting immorally by going against what they know to be right, and also experience the self-rewards for moral behavior? One possibility is that the participants in question have come to deny any moral responsibility in this situation, thereby deactivating the moral norm. Or perhaps they have come to deny that they are able to carry out the task, or that they are no longer aware of the likely consequences of their actions. But there is no evidence to suggest that these background conditions have failed to apply in these particular cases (Batson 2008: 57). Another possibility is that these participants have come to think that their behavior is in line with their moral standards, thereby allowing them to not feel guilt and to even perhaps take pride in their behavior. This could be because they have revised the content of the moral principle to create an exception clause for this one kind of situation. Or it might be that they lie to or deceive themselves about what the principle says in the first place.