Recently, we have reported first conclusive empirical evidence that primed cognitive conflict is effortful in terms of effort-related cardiovascular responses (Bouzidi & Gendolla, 2023). In line with the conflict signal hypothesis, we posited that this effect occurred because of cognitive conflict’s aversive nature. Additionally, from a volitional perspective, action control processes are said to be efficient cognitive tools for shielding individuals against incidental affective influences. In this talk, we present two studies using a conflict priming paradigm (Dreisbach & Fischer, 2012). We will first present results that aimed to show that conflict effects on effort can be moderated by individual differences in action-state orientation. Second, we will present results showing that this shielding effect also occurs if individuals can personally choose task characteristics. As expected, both dispositional action-orientation and personal choice attenuated the impact of conflict primes on cardiovascular indices of effort. Our results shed new light on the beneficial role of action control processes on conflict-related affective influences on effort. Furthermore, our studies provide the first evidence that cognitive conflict is indeed effortful using a paradigm that allowed disentangling the impact of cognitive conflict from a mere response difficulty effect.