David Chester
@davidchester.bsky.social
Associate Prof at VCU. Experimental psychologist. Aggression scientist. Dad.
https://davidchester.weebly.com/
https://davidchester.weebly.com/
Pinned
OSF
osf.io
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.io/preprints/ps...
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
November 5, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Refusing to forgive, versus inaction, can make people feel empowered, principled, and courageous. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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...
November 4, 2025 at 8:21 PM
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...
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.
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
November 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
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.
Reposted by David Chester
Mouse cursor tracking contributes to the psychological validation of the drift diffusion model: https://osf.io/74rjv
October 31, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Mouse cursor tracking contributes to the psychological validation of the drift diffusion model: https://osf.io/74rjv
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.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 31, 2025 at 1:54 PM
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.io/preprints/ps...
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
October 31, 2025 at 7:41 AM
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-...
Reposted by David Chester
A reminder that I’m accepting applications for PhD students!
✨✨ I will be reviewing applications for the University of Minnesota psychology PhD program this fall!
Information for potential applicants can be found on my lab website: ringwaldlab.psych.umn.edu/join-lab
Please spread the word!
Information for potential applicants can be found on my lab website: ringwaldlab.psych.umn.edu/join-lab
Please spread the word!
Join the Lab | Ringwald Lab
ringwaldlab.psych.umn.edu
October 30, 2025 at 2:54 PM
A reminder that I’m accepting applications for PhD students!
Reposted by David Chester
So that is why you don't prompt people once a day for an entire year... #OpenESM - data from openesmdata.org/datasets/001...
October 24, 2025 at 7:30 AM
So that is why you don't prompt people once a day for an entire year... #OpenESM - data from openesmdata.org/datasets/001...
Reposted by David Chester
Such a precious gift! Thank you for this resource.
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...
▶️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...
October 23, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Such a precious gift! Thank you for this resource.
A neural signature for self-focused thinking. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
October 23, 2025 at 3:13 PM
A neural signature for self-focused thinking. www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
Reposted by David Chester
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/...
1/n
guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/...
October 21, 2025 at 1:47 PM
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/...
1/n
guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/...
Perceptions of men seem to have become more negative over the past 50 years.
October 17, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Perceptions of men seem to have become more negative over the past 50 years.
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
October 8, 2025 at 6:47 PM
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...
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
October 8, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Positive emotions are bouba and negative emotions are kiki. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
VCU is hiring two TT Assistant Profs in Psychology (Open area)! Please reach out to me if you have questions.
vcujobs.com/jobs/assista...
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
October 7, 2025 at 1:13 PM
VCU is hiring two TT Assistant Profs in Psychology (Open area)! Please reach out to me if you have questions.
vcujobs.com/jobs/assista...
vcujobs.com/jobs/assista...
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
October 6, 2025 at 5:36 PM
A conceptual analysis of hundreds of participants' descriptions of humiliating experiences. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
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
September 30, 2025 at 5:07 PM
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/...
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
September 30, 2025 at 4:56 PM
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....
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
September 29, 2025 at 2:50 AM
The importance of benchmarks and 'magnitude estimation' techniques for accurate modeling of moral judgments. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by David Chester
Would p-curve work if you dropped a piano on it?
datacolada.org/129
datacolada.org/129
September 24, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Would p-curve work if you dropped a piano on it?
datacolada.org/129
datacolada.org/129
Reposted by David Chester
Nails it.
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/...
September 24, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Nails it.
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
September 24, 2025 at 2:34 PM
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...
The classic Dot Probe is trash, but this new version shows some early signs of promise as a valid behavioral measure of attentional bias to threat. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Evidence of an exponential relationship between attentional bias to threat and anxiety using an original “eye-dot-probe” task - Motivation and Emotion
Over the past decade, the anxiety-related attentional bias to threat, widely investigated through the dot-probe task, has faced challenges. Although the dominant view assumes a static attentional bias...
link.springer.com
September 20, 2025 at 7:45 PM
The classic Dot Probe is trash, but this new version shows some early signs of promise as a valid behavioral measure of attentional bias to threat. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
AI recruiting AI participants to do AI-designed studies for AI-written manuscripts that are accepted to AI journals that produce AI content for AI views to make AI stats go up. They won't even notice when the academics die out. That's the dead ivory tower aliens are one day going to find.
AI HR hiring AI candidates to do AI jobs selling AI products which are advertised on AI channels producing AI content for AI views to make AI stats go up. They won't even notice when the humans die out. That's the dead world aliens are one day going to find.
September 18, 2025 at 3:51 PM
AI recruiting AI participants to do AI-designed studies for AI-written manuscripts that are accepted to AI journals that produce AI content for AI views to make AI stats go up. They won't even notice when the academics die out. That's the dead ivory tower aliens are one day going to find.