Garfinkel proposed implicitly the hypothesis that we keep the basic rules whenever the rules are legal. I examined it again with 132 subjects in an unfamiliar situation, the virtual maze. In a maze pre-set in PC, subjects wandered five times. On the 4th and 5th trial, they are caught in a "Fire." They have to avoid the fire before reaching the safe exit. A virtual advisor, the "Mate," comes up on occasion. The Mate gives them advice but it's up to the subjects whether or not to follow it. Those 79 subjects (17 males and 62 females) who failed to escape the fire on both 4thand 5th trials were assigned to any of 3 groups. The comparisons of the degrees to which the subjects took the Mate's advice in their escape show 1) that the two groups of subjects hold the original basic rules less persistently than the third when the original ones are breached, 2) that the former two groups try to escape by the newly acquired basic rules after their new ones are breached, and 3) that the third group try to go back to the original ones. The implications of these results were discussed.
