 <p>CallumD's solution worked for me, and seemed the most consistent with the techniques recommended in the rest of Michael Hartl's tutorial. But I wanted to tighten up the syntax a little to make it more consistent with the other specs in the same tutorial:</p> <pre><code>it "should not be able to delete itself" do expect { delete user_path(admin) }.not_to change(User, :count) end </code></pre>