Burdens of non-conformity: Motor execution reveals cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations

Force reflections of auditory and tactile action-effect weighting in motor planning

Most voluntary actions have only few goals, which provides considerable freedom in the selection of action parameters. Recent studies showed that task-irrelevant aspects of the task context influence the motor parameters of the actions in a way which seems to reflect the relative importance of these aspects within the underlying action representation. The present study investigated how the intensity of auditory action-effects affected force exertion patterns in a self-paced action production task. Participants applied force impulses with their index finger on a force-sensitive resistor every three seconds. In four separate conditions, force impulses elicited no sound, or elicited tones with 69, 59 or 49 dB intensity. The results showed that participants applied more force when tone intensity was lower, and when tones were absent. These force differences were also present in the first 60 ms following tone onset, implying that these reflected differences in motor planning. The results are compatible with the notion that actions are represented in terms of their sensory effects, which are weighted differently-presumably to maintain an optimal level of overall auditory and tactile stimulation in the present case. These results hint at the potential usefulness of motor parameters as readouts of action intentions.

How to overcome biases against creativity: The role of familiarity with and confidence in original solutions

Despite the societal relevance of creative ideas, humans favor traditional over more original solutions, conceivably because of the increased uncertainty that comes with trying novel approaches. Here, we tested whether this anti-creativity bias can be counteracted by increasing familiarity with, and confidence in, creative solutions. Participants chose between creative and traditional uses for given objects. In study 1 (N = 67 international adults), these objects repeated either identically or conceptually during the experiment; and in study 2 (N = 68 international adults), choice options were either self-generated or externally provided. Spatial and temporal measures of response selection indicated an implicit bias towards the traditional approach, independent of repetition type (study 1). This attraction towards the norm was also found for self-generated creative ideas, but it was considerably reduced compared to other-generated ideas (study 2). Instead of increasing familiarity, building confidence in creative solutions might thus be the key to reduce corresponding uncertainty and promote successful creative ideation.

Following Affirmative and Negated Rules

Rules are often stated in a negated manner ("no trespassing") rather than in an affirmative manner ("stay in your lane"). Here, we build on classic research on negation processing and, using a finger-tracking design on a touchscreen, we show that following negated rather than affirmative rules is harder as indicated by multiple performance measures. Moreover, our results indicate that practice has a surprisingly limited effect on negated rules, which are implemented more quickly with training, but this effect comes at the expense of reduced efficiency. Only affirmative rules are thus put into action efficiently, highlighting the importance of tailoring how rules are communicated to the peculiarities of the human mind.

Taking the chance!-Interindividual differences in rule-breaking

While some individuals tend to follow norms, others, in the face of tempting but forbidden options, tend to commit rule-breaking when this action is beneficial for themselves. Previous studies have neglected such interindividual differences in rule-breaking. The present study fills this gap by investigating cognitive characteristics of individuals who commit spontaneous deliberative rule-breaking (rule-breakers) versus rule-followers. We developed a computerised task, in which 133 participants were incentivised to sometimes violate set rules which would-if followed-lead to a loss. While 52% of participants tended to break rules to obtain a benefit, 48% tended to follow rules even if this behaviour led to loss. Although rule-breakers experienced significantly more cognitive conflict (measured via response times and mouse movement trajectories) than rule-followers, they also obtained higher payoffs. In rule-breakers, cognitive conflict was more pronounced when violating the rules than when following them, and mainly during action planning. This conflict increased with frequent, recurrent, and early rule-breaking. Our results were in line with the Decision-Implementation-Mandatory switch-Inhibition model and thus extend the application of this model to the interindividual differences in rule-breaking. Furthermore, personality traits such as extroversion, disagreeableness, risk propensity, high impulsiveness seem to play a role in the appreciation of behaviours and cognitive characteristics of rule-followers and rule-breakers. This study opens the path towards the understanding of the cognitive characteristics of the interindividual differences in responses towards rules, and especially in spontaneous deliberative rule-breaking.

Soft Economic Incentives and Soft Behavioral Interventions on the Public's Green Purchasing Behaviour - The Evidence from China

Purpose

To explore the effects of "soft" behavioral intervention policies (eg, green emotions, social norms) and "soft" economic incentive policies (eg, high-intensity subsidies, low-intensity subsidies) and their combinations on the public's green product purchasing behavior.

Participants and Methods

An online questionnaire experiment was conducted on Chinese users using Credamo online questionnaire platform to explore the effects of different "soft" intervention policies on consumers' green purchasing behavior, and the sample data were examined using multiple regression. In Study 1, a total of 460 valid samples were collected to explore the differences in the effects of single intervention policies; in Study 2, a total of 556 valid samples were collected to explore the effects of a combination of soft policies.

Results

In the area of green product purchasing, both behavioral interventions and economic incentives alone can promote green consumption behavior; economic incentives have a more positive impact on guiding consumers to green consumption; the combination of "soft" behavioral interventions and "soft" economic incentives has a positive impact on green consumption. The combination of "soft" behavioral intervention policies and "soft" economic incentive policies is more effective than the individual policies.

Conclusion

The experimental results of Study 1 show that the policy effects of both behavioral intervention policies and economic incentive intervention policies are evident for goods with different value attributes. Meanwhile, comparing the two types of soft intervention policies, we find that the effect of economic incentive intervention policies is stronger than that of soft behavioral intervention policies. In Study 2, the empirical analysis of the policy mix shows that the policy mix is more effective. The combination of "soft" economic incentive policies and "soft" behavioral intervention policies can effectively increase the salience of policy instruments, and the effect of policy combinations is greater than that of single policies.

Who did I lie to that day? Deception impairs memory in daily life

Research has demonstrated that deceptive responses can undermine item and source memories. However, previous studies have often randomly assigned participants to an honest or deception group and asked them to respond in specific ways in an interview, rather than providing them a choice of what response to give. Moreover, little attention has been given to destination memory in previous research. Using a daily life paradigm, we investigated the effects of deception on memory. After completing a mock shopping task, participants were told that someone would ask them questions about their shopping lists. The participants voluntarily chose to tell the truth or lie in the interview and were encouraged to respond as they would in their daily lives. An item memory test, source memory test and destination memory test were given 48 h after the interview. Source and destination memories but not item memories were impaired for participants who chose to lie. Specifically, liars forgot the things about which they lied and mistakenly believed that they lied about many things that they did not, and they also did not remember to whom they lied. We conclude that deception can disrupt memory in daily life.

Collective rule-breaking

Rules form an important part of our everyday lives. Here we explore the role of social influence in rule-breaking. In particular, we identify some of the cognitive mechanisms underlying rule-breaking and propose approaches for how they can be scaled up to the level of groups or crowds to better understand the emergence of collective rule-breaking. Social contagion plays an important role in such processes and different dynamics such as linear or rapid nonlinear spreading can have important consequences for interventions in rule-breaking. A closer integration of cognitive psychology, microsociology and mathematical modelling will be key to a deeper understanding of collective rule-breaking to turn this field of research into a predictive science.

Cognitive strategies for managing cheating: The roles of cognitive abilities in managing moral shortcuts

Cheating and immorality are highly researched phenomena, likely due to their great impact. However, little research has examined the real-time cognitive mechanisms that are involved in cheating and conflict management. Much of the cheating research to date concentrates on binary cheating; however, in more prevalent real-world scenarios, people often engage in more ambiguous self-serving mistakes. To execute such self-serving decisions, one may make use of conflict-management strategies to help balance an internal struggle between gain and self-concept. We propose that to enact such strategies one must employ sufficient cognitive resources. To test this, we employed a simple effortful control task that allows for comparisons of gain and no-gain errors, isolating self-serving mistakes while recording gaze and response-time measures. Findings revealed that individuals can make use of conflict management strategies that mimicked errors made inadvertently. Two strategies included gaze avert and quick response times during gain blocks, whereby participants simulated out-of-control-like behaviors while engaging in self-serving mistakes, plausibly as a method of self-justification. Strategy use was dependent upon individuals' cognitive abilities. Participants reporting high inhibitory control abilities were able to use gaze aversion to engage in self-serving mistakes, while those reporting high attention resources were able to employ faster response times when making more profitable errors. Taken together, this paper contributes to (1) the debate on whether honesty/dishonesty is the dominant response, (2) the debate on self-control and inhibition on cheating, and (3) the understudied area of cognitive justifications to maintain a positive self-concept.

Pictorial vs. linguistic negation: Investigating negation in imperatives across different symbol domains

The processing of negation is typically regarded as one of the most demanding cognitive processes as it often involves the reversal of input information. As negation is also regarded as a core linguistic process, to date, investigations of negation have typically been linguistic in nature. However, negation is a standard operator also within non-linguistic domains. For example, traffic signs often use negation to indicate a prohibition of specific actions (e.g., no left turn). In the current study, we investigate whether processing difficulties that are typically reported within the linguistic domain generalize to pictorial negation. Across two experiments, linguistic negation and pictorial negation were directly compared to their affirmative counterparts. In line with the literature, the results show that there is a general processing benefit for pictorial input. Most interestingly, the core process of negation also benefits from the pictorial input. Specifically, the processing difficulty in pictorial negation compared to affirmation is less pronounced than within the linguistic domain, especially concerning error rates. In the current experiments, pictorial negation did not result in increased error rates compared to the affirmative condition. Overall, the current results suggest that negation in pictorial conditions also results in a slowing of information processing. However, the use of pictorial negation can ease processing difficulty over linguistic negation.

Detecting faking-good response style in personality questionnaires with four choice alternatives

Deliberate attempts to portray oneself in an unrealistic manner are commonly encountered in the administration of personality questionnaires. The main aim of the present study was to explore whether mouse tracking temporal indicators and machine learning models could improve the detection of subjects implementing a faking-good response style when answering personality inventories with four choice alternatives, with and without time pressure. A total of 120 volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups and asked to respond to the Virtuous Responding (VR) validity scale of the PPI-R and the Positive Impression Management (PIM) validity scale of the PAI via a computer mouse. A mixed design was implemented, and predictive models were calculated. The results showed that, on the PIM scale, faking-good participants were significantly slower in responding than honest respondents. Relative to VR items, PIM items are shorter in length and feature no negations. Accordingly, the PIM scale was found to be more sensitive in distinguishing between honest and faking-good respondents, demonstrating high classification accuracy (80–83%).

Design choices: Empirical recommendations for designing two-dimensional finger-tracking experiments

The continuous tracking of mouse or finger movements has become an increasingly popular research method for investigating cognitive and motivational processes such as decision-making, action-planning, and executive functions. In the present paper, we evaluate and discuss how apparently trivial design choices of researchers may impact participants' behavior and, consequently, a study's results. We first provide a thorough comparison of mouse- and finger-tracking setups on the basis of a Simon task. We then vary a comprehensive set of design factors, including spatial layout, movement extent, time of stimulus onset, size of the target areas, and hit detection in a finger-tracking variant of this task. We explore the impact of these variations on a broad spectrum of movement parameters that are typically used to describe movement trajectories. Based on our findings, we suggest several recommendations for best practice that avoid some of the pitfalls of the methodology. Keeping these recommendations in mind will allow for informed decisions when planning and conducting future tracking experiments.

Can We Prepare to Negate? Negation as a Reversal Operator

Negation is a critical cognitive operator that is investigated across a wide range of psychological phenomena (e.g., language, eating control, emotion control, stereotype processing). A core function of negation is reversing input information. In the current study, we investigated whether this reversing process benefits from temporal preparation. In Experiment 1, participants were first presented with either the negator "not" or the affirmative counterpart "now", and in a variable delay with the response indicating stimulus "left" or "right". Participants had to respond according to phrase meaning (e.g., "now right" ➔ right response; "not right" ➔ left response). The results showed a persisting negation effect of 150 ms that did not reduce with preparatory time. In Experiment 2, we replicated this study using non-linguistic input information (i.e. crosses, tick-marks and arrows). Again, despite standard temporal preparation effects being present, the reversal process itself did not benefit from preparatory time. In summary, these experiments suggest that capacity demanding reversal processes are not eased if we know that a reversal process is coming up soon. This is particularly interesting, as in the current experiments a very basic binary negation paradigm was implemented. The implications of these results for models of negation processing are discussed.

Reaching goals through different means: will and cognition in the action of people with low and high action control

Background

When observing how people strive to achieve their goals, we can discern two main styles. Some people accomplish their goals mainly through strong will while others may need additional and compound plans to rely on. Two different modes of implemen-tation of intentional behavior are explored.

Participants and procedure

Two correlational studies on young Polish adults (N = 227 and N = 516) were performed. Structural equations and modeling techniques using the partial least squares (PLS) method were used to verify the predictions.

Results

The first investigation revealed that the intention of saving money is achieved through the mechanism of implementation inten-tion. It was found that people with a low level of action control (state-orientation) and people with a high level of action control (action-orientation) implement a similar level of saving behavior. However, they do so in different ways. Action-oriented partic-ipants also seemed to make plans, and these plans supported goal attainment, though this process did not affect behavior to the same degree as for state-oriented participants. The results are discussed, drawing on the Julius Kuhl Action Control Theory as well as its explication which is the Theory of Personality Systems Interactions.

Conclusions

The present research indicates that cognitive mechanisms may compensate for volitional deficits (planning behavior) in people with low action control, whereas in the case of people with a high level of action control their will (intensification of intentions) plays a crucial role.

Performance Monitoring and Correct Response Significance in Conscientious Individuals

There is sufficient evidence to believe that variations in the error-related negativity (ERN) are linked to dispositional characteristics in individuals. However, explanations of individual differences in the amplitude of the ERN cannot be derived from functional theories of the ERN. The ERN has a counterpart that occurs after correct responses (correct-response negativity, CRN). Based on the assumption that ERN and CRN reflect an identical cognitive process, variations in CRN might be associated with dispositional characteristics as well. Higher CRN amplitudes have been found to reflect task engagement. In the present study, a simple-choice-reaction task was used to investigate ERN and CRN amplitudes in relation to their score on a conscientiousness scale. The task consisted of a simple rule that required pressing the left or right key when a circle or square appeared, respectively. During alternative conditions that occur infrequently, participants were instructed to violate or reverse the previously established response rules. Smaller ΔERN amplitudes (manifested in almost equal CRN and ERN amplitudes) and a tendency of better task performance from participants scoring high on the conscientiousness scale might indicate a greater focus on the task and higher motivation of responding correctly. In addition, higher Pc amplitudes directly following the CRN indicated that the response monitoring system of less conscientious participants showed a higher disengagement. The role of individual differences in CRN amplitude should be studied in future experiments on performance monitoring.

On the ball: Short-term consequences of movement fakes

In competitive situations, humans sometimes use fake actions. Fake actions are carried out to pretend a certain action goal, which however is not actually pursued, such as pump fakes in basketball, or drop shots in tennis. Here, we studied the short-term consequences of producing or observing fakes on the planning and detection of subsequent fake actions. Two players participated in a game, an attacker and a defender. Attackers had to either throw a ball into a target basket of the defender, or to mimic such a throw without actually throwing. Defenders had to discriminate between real throws and faked throws. Participants changed the roles of attacker and defender, and switched between real and faked throws randomly, on a trial-by-trial basis. We found that the (self-)observation of a fake action facilitated the detection of subsequent fake actions of opponents, but did not facilitate the subsequent planning of own fake actions. We conjecture that previous encounters of fake actions help to focus on the movement aspects that are most diagnostic for such fake actions. As a potential practical consequence, we recommend to not generate multiple fake actions in sports within a short time, to prevent potential short-term perceptual adaptation effects of defenders.

How Not to Fall for the White Bear: Combined Frequency and Recency Manipulations Diminish Negation Effects on Overt Behavior

Processing negated mental representations comes with a price: Not only are negations harder to resolve than affirmative statements, but they may even invoke ironic effects, producing the exact opposite of the intended outcome. Negation effects also behave ironically when subjected to high-frequency training; when they are confronted often, the difficulty to process negations strangely increases. Here we show that negation effects can be mitigated under certain circumstances. Based on models of cognitive control and conflict adaptation, we hypothesized that negation effects diminish when two criteria are met: negations have to be resolved not only frequently, but also just recently. We confirmed this prediction in two experiments by using an innovative, two-dimensional finger tracking design, in which we measured the influence of the original semantic content during negation processing via temporal and spatial measures. Negation effects were present throughout the experiment, but were reduced after recent negations, particularly during or after a high-frequency negation context. The combined influence of frequency and recency thus seems to be the most successful and promising attempt to mitigate ironic negation effects on overt behavior.

Increasing reward prospect promotes cognitive flexibility: Direct evidence from voluntary task switching with double registration

Recent research has suggested that sequential changes in the prospect of performance-contingent rewards may influence the balance between cognitive flexibility and stability: whereas constant high reward prospect seems to promote cognitive stability, increasing reward prospect has been shown to promote flexible behaviour in voluntary task-switching paradigms. Previous studies, however, confounded cognitive flexibility regarding voluntary task choices with control processes during task execution. We present five experiments to dissociate these two processes by means of a double registration procedure, in which task choice is registered prior to task execution. The data yielded clear evidence for reward-driven modulation of the flexibility-stability balance already at the level of task choices, with higher voluntary switch rates when reward prospect increased compared with situations in which reward prospect remained high. This effect was further modulated by the specific type of registration procedure, suggesting that only deliberate task choices are affected by the reward sequence. These results thus confirm that the prospect of performance-contingent reward can indeed promote either cognitive stability or flexibility depending on the immediate reward history.

Risky business! Behavioral bias and motivational salience of rule-violations in children with conduct disorder

Conduct disorder is characterized by both habitual aggression as well as non-aggressive rule-breaking behavior. While a large body of research has focused on aggressive behavior to date, the subtype of non-aggressive rule-breaking behavior is poorly understood. The current study represents a first attempt to directly assess decision biases toward rule-breaking behavior, their motivational salience, and the association with interpersonal factors in conduct disorder. Participants (n = 20 children with conduct disorder and n = 20 healthy controls) played a video game with the goal to deliver a hot pizza by bicycle to a marked location on a two-dimensional city map. In each trial, participants decided whether to use the regular route (streets) or opt for a potential shortcut that was either permitted (bicycle lane) or prohibited (park). The efficiency of the shortcut was parametrically varied to assess individual decision functions. Consistent with our hypotheses, group differences emerged only when taking a shortcut represented a rule violation (park condition), with the conduct disorder group committing significantly more rule violations than controls. Furthermore, conduct disorder children showed a substantial frequency of rule violations even in the absence of shortcut related gains, indicating a pronounced insensitivity towards sanctions. Importantly, this tendency was associated with self-reported impulsivity and rule violations in real life.

Building Blocks of Psychology: on Remaking the Unkept Promises of Early Schools

The appeal and popularity of "building blocks", i.e., simple and dissociable elements of behavior and experience, persists in psychological research. We begin our assessment of this research strategy with an historical review of structuralism (as espoused by E. B. Titchener) and behaviorism (espoused by J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner), two movements that held the assumption in their attempts to provide a systematic and unified discipline. We point out the ways in which the elementism of the two schools selected, framed, and excluded topics of study. After the historical review, we turn to contemporary literature and highlight the persistence of research into building blocks and the associated framing and exclusions in psychological research. The assumption that complex categories of human psychology can be understood in terms of their elementary components and simplest forms seems indefensible. In specific cases, therefore, reliance on the assumption requires justification. Finally, we review alternative strategies that bypass the commitment to building blocks.

This Is How To Be a Rule Breaker

Violating rules comes with cognitive conflict for the rule-breaker. Here, we probed for means to reduce the behavioral effects of this conflict by studying the combined impact of recency and frequency of rule violations. We found that violating a rule facilitated the initiation of a subsequent rule violation, while notable costs relative to rule-based responding remained in measures of response execution. Such costs during response execution vanished, however, when frequency and recency of rule violation worked in concert. That is, it is possible to overcome the costs of rule violation when (a) having violated this particular rule frequently and (b) having violated this particular rule very recently. Moreover, we demonstrated that recent rule violations reduce the costs of cognitive conflict in an unrelated interference task (Simon task). Based on these findings, we present a revised model of the cognitive processes underlying deliberate rule violations.

Contributions of expected sensory and affective action effects to action selection and performance: Evidence from forced- and free-choice tasks

Whereas ideomotor approaches to action control emphasize the importance of sensory action effects for action selection, motivational approaches emphasize the role of affective action effects. We used a game-like experimental setup to directly compare the roles of sensory and affective action effects in selecting and performing reaching actions in forced- and free-choice tasks. The two kinds of action effects did not interact. Action selection and execution in the forced-choice task were strongly impacted by the spatial compatibility between actions and the expected sensory action effects, whereas the free-choice task was hardly affected. In contrast, action execution, but not selection, in both tasks was strongly impacted by the spatial compatibility between actions and highly valued action effects. This pattern suggests that sensory and affective action effects serve different purposes: The former seem to dominate rule-based action selection, whereas the latter might serve to reduce any remaining action uncertainty.

My mistake? Enhanced error processing for commanded compared to passively observed actions

We often ask other people to carry out actions for us in order to reach our goals. However, these commanded actions may sometimes go awry, and goal attainment is hindered by errors of the following person. Here, we investigated how the commanding person processes these errors of their follower. Because such errors indicate that the original goal of the command is not met, error processing for these actions should be enhanced compared to passively observing another person's actions. Participants thus either commanded another agent to perform one of four key press responses or they passively observed the agent responding. The agent could respond correctly or commit an error in either case. We compared error processing of commanded and passively observed actions using observation-related post-error slowing (oPES) as a behavioral marker and observed-error-related negativity (oN_E /oERN) and observed-error positivity (oP_E ) as electrophysiological markers. Whereas error processing, as measured via the oERN, was similarly pronounced for commanded and observed actions, commanded actions gave rise to stronger oPES and a stronger oP_E . These results suggest that enhanced monitoring is an automatic by-product of commanding another person's actions.

The Role of Working Memory Gating in Task Switching: A Procedural Version of the Reference-Back Paradigm

Models of working memory (WM) suggest that the contents of WM are separated from perceptual input by a gate, that enables shielding information against interference when closed, and allows for rapid updating when open. Recent work in the declarative WM domain provided evidence for this notion, demonstrating the behavioral cost of opening and closing the gate. The goal of the present work was to examine gating in procedural WM, namely in a task-switching experiment. In each trial, participants were presented with a digit and a task cue, indicating whether the required task was a parity or a magnitude decision. Critically, a colored frame around the stimulus indicated whether the task cue was relevant (attend trials), or whether it had to be ignored, and the previous task set should be applied regardless of the present cue (ignore trials). Switching between tasks, and between ignore and attend trials, was manipulated. The results of two experiments demonstrated that the cost of gate opening was eliminated in task switching trials, implying that both processes operate in parallel.

Behaviour versus performance: The veiled commitment of experimental psychology

The use and teaching of experimentation in psychology ought to accompany a discussion of what is within and what is beyond the reach of the method. I address this question by outlining the necessary restrictions that are prerequisite for conducting an experiment. The restrictions include establishing a fixed goal, the fulfillment of which represents successful participation in the experiment, a finite set of possible expressions for satisfying the goal, and a fixed assignment between each possible expression and how it should be performed. These restrictions entail rules that determine what counts as good participation (evaluation), and rules that determine whether a behaviour counts as participation at all (inclusion). Participants’ conformity to the rules makes experimentation possible and, more importantly, maintains the experimenter’s attention on features of performance. This selective attention, in turn, neglects participants’ capacities for adopting and violating rules, and possible alterations in their goals and interpretations. While these capacities fall beyond the scope of experimental psychology, their recognition is necessary for encountering what is not already understood at the start of a research project.

Rule-violations sensitise towards negative and authority-related stimuli

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime (instead of rule violations). Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions.

Smooth criminal: convicted rule-breakers show reduced cognitive conflict during deliberate rule violations

Classic findings on conformity and obedience document a strong and automatic drive of human agents to follow any type of rule or social norm. At the same time, most individuals tend to violate rules on occasion, and such deliberate rule violations have recently been shown to yield cognitive conflict for the rule-breaker. These findings indicate persistent difficulty to suppress the rule representation, even though rule violations were studied in a controlled experimental setting with neither gains nor possible sanctions for violators. In the current study, we validate these findings by showing that convicted criminals, i.e., individuals with a history of habitual and severe forms of rule violations, can free themselves from such cognitive conflict in a similarly controlled laboratory task. These findings support an emerging view that aims at understanding rule violations from the perspective of the violating agent rather than from the perspective of outside observer.