The sleeping dragon of rebellion 27 findings apply to the more moderate amounts of deprivation and weight loss seen in the typical dieter? Do they apply to you and me? Restraint Theory and the‘ What the Hell’ Effect Given the importance of the central issues of Restraint Theory, it is surprising that it is little known outside of select research circles. It was around thirty years after the Minnesota Experiment that the research began with the seminal milkshake experiment published by Peter Herman in 1975. Most of the research was done on college students. Why college students? Because they are cheaper than laboratory rats and don’ t have a powerful lobby looking out for their safety! They are also more gullible than rats – an important trait, as will become evident. And then there are some things that even rats just won’ t do!( Having been a cheap, hungry and gullible college student, I think I can get away with this!) Let’ s start with the milkshake experiment. A group of college students made up of those who are dieting and those who are not, are told that the researchers are testing the appeal of different flavors of ice cream. As is sometimes the case with college students, what they are told is not quite the whole truth! The first untruth they are told is that there will be a delay in the testing program as the researchers sort out some backroom problems. The students are told that as there is plenty of ice cream they might as well have a milkshake or two, or three … while they are waiting. The researchers carefully observe how many milkshakes each student drinks. They are then offered the ice cream. Again the researchers carefully count how many servings of ice cream each student eats. What they found was that for those students who were not dieting, as was expected, the more milkshakes they drank beforehand, the less ice cream they subsequently ate. In contrast, the students who were dieting had the opposite result. The more milkshakes they drank beforehand, the more ice cream they subsequently ate!