David Chester

@davidchester.bsky.social

1.5K followers 400 following 570 posts

Associate Prof at VCU. Experimental psychologist. Aggression scientist. Dad.

https://davidchester.weebly.com/

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Environmental science 23%

Geology 19%

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David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 10d

Check out this new preprint from our lab, led by @brownwt.bsky.social and the Bluesky-less Sydney Kavanaugh. We found that psychopathy, especially its antagonistic and disinhibited facets, is more linked to low self-reported levels of **positive** than negative empathy.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 5d

They're assigned readings in my Personality course!

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 5d

Refusing to forgive, versus inaction, can make people feel empowered, principled, and courageous. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Refusing to forgive can have psychological benefits

Offering forgiveness can confer benefits to victims in terms of enhanced sense of self. In the present research, we argue that refusing to forgive may…

www.sciencedirect.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 6d

Analysis of mouse-tracking data reveals support for both dynamic competition and impulse inhibition accounts of self-control, thought inhibition is relatively rare. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 9d

Telling problem drinkers that there's no safe level of alcohol consumption helps them recognize their problem, but it also freaks them out and they dislike the message.

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 10d

Effects of 'No Safe Level' and 'Cutting Down' Alcohol Messages on Problem Recognition, Defensive Processing, and Self-Efficacy in Heavy Drinkers: A Randomized Experimental Study: https://osf.io/jze7p

Reposted by David Chester

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 10d

Effects of 'No Safe Level' and 'Cutting Down' Alcohol Messages on Problem Recognition, Defensive Processing, and Self-Efficacy in Heavy Drinkers: A Randomized Experimental Study: https://osf.io/jze7p

Reposted by David Chester

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 10d

Mouse cursor tracking contributes to the psychological validation of the drift diffusion model: https://osf.io/74rjv

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 11d

A truly Strong Test™ of attachment theory, longitudinally testing whether infants' early caregiver relationships explain variance in their adult attachments. Fortuitously for our field, they do (though effect sizes are much smaller than I would've imagined). psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

APA PsycNet

psycnet.apa.org

Reposted by David Chester

Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 18d

So that is why you don't prompt people once a day for an entire year... #OpenESM - data from openesmdata.org/datasets/001...

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 18d

A neural signature for self-focused thinking. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...

Reposted by David Chester, Patrick S. Forscher, Matt N Williams , and 4 more David Chester, Patrick S. Forscher, Matt N Williams, Jill A. Jacobson, Matti Vuorre, Gemma C. Sharp, Jan R. Boehnke

Björn Siepe @bsiepe.bsky.social · 19d

We built the openESM database:
▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place
▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software
▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python

Find out more:
🌐 openesmdata.org
📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Reposted by David Chester

Eric Hehman @erichehman.bsky.social · 20d

We have a new tutorial out in Social Cog methods issue, a resampling tool we made in R that basically tells you when some average is "stable" and can be used to guide data collection or test hypotheses related to variance. Quick explanation here
1/n

guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/...

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 24d

CANT IMAGINE WHY

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · 24d

Perceptions of men seem to have become more negative over the past 50 years.

Meltem Yucel @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social · 24d

“Men are still seen as more agentic than women, though ‘equal’ is on the rise” Alice Eagly, SESP Scientific Impact Award recipient.

#SESP2025 #SESP25

Reposted by Mark J. Brandt, David Chester

Meltem Yucel @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social · 24d

“Men are still seen as more agentic than women, though ‘equal’ is on the rise” Alice Eagly, SESP Scientific Impact Award recipient.

#SESP2025 #SESP25

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Oct 8

Can AI ever become conscious? It will depend on whether consciousness can only arise from the electrochemical processes inherent to biological entities. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Can only meat machines be conscious?

Computational functionalism claims that executing certain computations is sufficient for consciousness, regardless of the physical mechanisms implementing those computations. This view neglects a comp...

www.cell.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Oct 8

Positive emotions are bouba and negative emotions are kiki. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Spiky anger, round peace: examining valence, arousal, and linguistic associations in emotion-eliciting concepts

This research examines how valence, arousal, and linguistic co-occurrence patterns influence shape-emotion associations. Across three studies, we tested whether positive and negative words are asso...

www.tandfonline.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Oct 7

VCU is hiring two TT Assistant Profs in Psychology (Open area)! Please reach out to me if you have questions.

vcujobs.com/jobs/assista...

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology - VCU Main Campus, Virginia, United States

Benefits: All full-time university staff are eligible for VCU’s robust benefits package that includes comprehensive health benefits, paid annual and holiday leave granted up front, generous tuition be...

vcujobs.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Oct 6

A conceptual analysis of hundreds of participants' descriptions of humiliating experiences. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

Reposted by David Chester

Brent W. Roberts @bwroberts.bsky.social · Oct 2

Good scientific practices get in the way of a clean narrative. A clean narrative is everything.

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 30

Adversarial collab shows conservatives are less likely to update their beliefs based on evidence than libs. Authors could not have gone more out of their way to express that these effect sizes are small, but I find them to still be of a meaningful size. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An adversarial collaboration on the rigidity‐of‐the‐right, symmetry thesis, or rigidity‐of‐extremes: The answer depends on the question

In an adversarial collaboration, two preregistered U.S.-based studies (total N = 6181) tested three hypotheses regarding the relationship between political ideology and belief rigidity (operationaliz....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 30

I love this paper so goddam much. In well-researched areas, we don't need new questionnaires. We need to take stock of what we have and refine it. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 29

The importance of benchmarks and 'magnitude estimation' techniques for accurate modeling of moral judgments. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How to show that a cruel prank is worse than a war crime: Shifting scales and missing benchmarks in the study of moral judgment

Moral judgment is central to both everyday life and cognitive science, but how can it be studied with quantitative precision? By far the most direct a…

www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by David Chester

Linda Skitka @lindaskitka.bsky.social · Sep 24

Nails it.

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Sep 23

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 24

Gun-related murders are on the rise and this study implies that ***45%*** of the reason for this increase is greater depictions of gun violence in movies (but not TV, somehow). The analyses are inappropriate, the pseudo-causal inferences based on them are absurd, and this paper should be ignored.

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 24

People don't just avoid those who reject others and approach those who accept others, but they also avoid and approach their friends, respectively. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Generalization of rejection and acceptance in social networks

Social environments present opportunities for connection and resources, but they also involve the risk of rejection. How do people learn which individ…

www.sciencedirect.com

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 24

"Presenting p-curve's performance for implausible edge case, without considering performance under likely cases, is like testing cars by dropping pianos on them .. if a car failed the piano test it wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) influence car-buying decisions, b/c pianos are so unlikely to fall on cars"

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Sep 24

Uri's response to the JASA p-curve critique:

datacolada.org/129

[129] P-curve works in practice, but would it work if you dropped a piano on it? - Data Colada

P-curve is a statistical tool we developed about 15 years ago to help rule out selective reporting, be it p-hacking or file-drawering, as the sole explanation for a set of significant results. This po...

datacolada.org

Reposted by David Chester, Matti Vuorre

Data Colada @datacolada.bsky.social · Sep 24

Would p-curve work if you dropped a piano on it?
datacolada.org/129

PIano being dropped on car in car testing facility

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