David S Chester

Virginia Commonwealth University | VCU · Department of Psychology

Sadism represents a predisposition towards enjoying the suffering that we cause others. However, this conceptualization of Sadism closely abuts that of schadenfreude—the tendency to find pleasure in others’ suffering. The relationship between trait Sadism and trait schadenfreude has gone understudied. Using latent construct modeling with a cross-se...

Intimate partner aggression (IPA) is a costly and incompletely understood phenomenon. Negative urgency, the tendency to act impulsively in response to negative affect, is predictive of IPA perpetration. Mindfulness, by virtue of its emphasis on non-reactivity to negative affect, is an opposing force to urgent tendencies that may mitigate the negati...

Aggression occurs frequently and severely between rival groups. Although there has been much study into the psychological and socio-ecological determinants of intergroup aggression, the neuroscience of this phenomenon remains incomplete. To examine the neural correlates of aggression directed at outgroup (versus ingroup) targets, we recruited 35 he...

Aggression occurs frequently and severely between rival groups. Although there has been much study into the psychological and socio-ecological determinants of intergroup aggression, the neuroscience of this phenomenon remains incomplete. To examine the neural correlates of aggression directed at outgroup (versus ingroup) targets, we recruited 35 he...

Do people harm others with the broader altruistic goal of helping them? Across four studies, we empirically examined whether people believe in such prosocial aggression and whether they would enact it when given the opportunity. In Study 1 (N = 493), participants reported considerable belief in the existence of prosocial aggression, which was simul...

Objective Trait aggression is a prominent construct in the psychological literature, yet little work has sought to situate trait aggression among broader frameworks of personality. Initial evidence suggests that trait aggression may be best couched within the nomological network of the Five Factor Model (FFM). The current work sought to locate the...

Trait aggression is a prominent construct in the psychological literature, yet little work has sought to situate trait aggression among broader frameworks of personality. Initial evidence suggests that trait aggression may be best couched within the nomological network of the Five Factor Model (FFM). The current work sought to locate the most appro...

Recent reviews suggest that, like much of the psychological literature, research studies using laboratory aggression paradigms tend to be underpowered to reliably locate commonly observed effect sizes (e.g., r = ~.10-.20, Cohen's d = ~0.20-0.40). In an effort to counter this trend, we provide a "power primer" that laboratory aggression researchers...

People sometimes hurt those they profess to love; yet our understanding of intimate partner aggression (IPA) and its causes remains incomplete. We examined brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in an ethnically and racially diverse sample of 50 female-male, monogamous romantic couples as they completed an aggression task...

People sometimes hurt those they profess to love; yet our understanding of intimate partner aggression (IPA) and its causes remains incomplete. We examined brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in an ethnically and racially diverse sample of 50 female-male, monogamous romantic couples as they completed an aggression task...

Retaliatory aggression is a rewarding behavior. Decisions about rewarding behaviors often involve an intertemporal bias, such that people prefer immediate rewards and discount delayed rewards. We integrated these literatures to test whether the delay discounting framework could be applied to retaliatory aggression. Across six studies (total N = 1,5...

Reactive aggression, a hostile retaliatory response to perceived threat, has been attributed to failures in emotion regulation. Interventions for reactive aggression have largely focused on cognitive control training, which target top-down emotion regulation mechanisms to inhibit aggressive impulses. Recent theory suggests that mindfulness training...

The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is a widely used laboratory aggression task, yet item response theory analyses of this task are nonexistent. To estimate these aspects of the TAP, we combined data from nine laboratory studies that employed the 25-trial version of the TAP (combined N = 1,856). One- and four-factor solutions for the TAP data exhi...

The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is a widely used laboratory aggression task, yet item response theory (IRT) analyses of this task are nonexistent. To estimate these aspects of the TAP, we combined data from nine laboratory studies that employed the 25-trial version of the TAP (combined N = 1,856). One-factor and four-factor solutions for the T...

Opioid misuse is a costly public health issue that often develops in response to physical pain. However, the roles of social pain in opioid misuse and the neural mechanisms that convey its potential effects are largely uninvestigated. Twenty eight participants who reported recreational opioid misuse in the past 30 days completed a study in which th...

Trait aggression has been studied for decades and yet remains adrift from broader frameworks of personality such as the Five Factor Model. Across two datasets from undergraduate participants (Study 1: N = 359; Study 2; N = 620), we observed strong manifest and latent correlations between trait aggression and lower agreeableness (i.e., greater antag...

The overall reliability or evidentiary value of any body of literature is established in part by ruling out publication bias for any observed effects. Questionable research practices have potentially undermined the evidentiary value of commonly-used research paradigms in psychological science. Subsequently, the evidentiary value of these common met...

The overall reliability or evidentiary value of any body of literature is established in part by ruling out publication bias for any observed effects. Questionable research practices have potentially undermined the evidentiary value of commonly used research paradigms in psychological science. Subsequently, the evidentiary value of these common met...

Trait aggression has been studied for decades and yet remains adrift from broader frameworks of personality such as the Five Factor Model. Across two datasets from undergraduate participants (Study 1: N = 359; Study 2; N = 620), we observed strong manifest and latent correlations between trait aggression and lower agreeableness (i.e., greater antag...

Experimental manipulations in social psychology must exhibit construct validity by influencing their intended psychological constructs. Yet how do experimenters in social psychology attempt to establish the construct validity of their manipulations? Following a preregistered plan, we coded 348 experimental manipulations from the 2017 issues of the...

Background Aggression often occurs alongside alcohol and drug misuse. However, it is not clear whether the latent and manifest relations among alcohol‐related, drug‐related, and non–substance‐related aggression are separate manifestations of a single construct or instead are 3 distinct constructs. Methods To examine these associations, we conducte...

Psychopathy is a considerable risk factor for violent behavior. However, many psychopathic individuals refrain from antisocial and criminal acts. The mechanisms underlying the formation of this "successful" phenotype are uncertain. We tested a compensatory model of "successful" psychopathy, which posits that relatively "successful" psychopathic ind...

Psychopathy is a considerable risk factor for violent behavior. However, many psychopathic individuals refrain from antisocial and criminal acts. The mechanisms underlying the formation of this ‘successful’ phenotype are uncertain. We tested a compensatory model of ‘successful’ psychopathy, which posits that relatively ‘successful’ psychopathic ind...

Aggression is an affect-laden behavior. The within-person variability of affective states that immediately precede, accompany, and follow aggression-and their links to between-person variability in aggressive behavior and traits-remain incompletely understood. To address this gap in our understanding, we examined 8 studies in which 2,173 participan...

Physical pain motivates the healing of somatic injuries. Yet it remains unknown whether social pain serves a similarly reparative function towards social injuries. Given the substantial overlap between physical and social pain, we predicted that social pain would mediate the effect of rejection on greater motivation for social reconnection and affi...

Multiple reviews and meta-analyses have identified the low pole of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) Agreeableness (also called Antagonism) as the primary domain-level personality correlates of aggression across self-report and behavioral methodologies. In the current study, we expand on this literature by investigating the relations between FFM facets a...

Aggression is an affect-laden behavior. The within-person variability of affective states that immediately precede, accompany, and follow aggression — and their links to between-person variability in aggressive behavior and traits — remain incompletely understood. To address this gap in our understanding, we examined eight studies in which 2,173 pa...

Psychopathic traits predispose individuals toward antisocial behavior. Such antagonistic acts often result in “unsuccessful” outcomes such as incarceration. What mechanisms allow some people with relatively high levels of psychopathic traits to live “successful”, unincarcerated lives, in spite of their antisocial tendencies? Using neuroimaging, we...

Experimental manipulations in social psychology must exhibit construct validity by influencing their intended psychological constructs. Yet how do experimenters in social psychology attempt to establish the construct validity of their manipulations? Following a preregistered plan, we coded 348 experimental manipulations from the 2017 issues of the...

Psychopathic traits predispose individuals toward antisocial behavior. Such antagonistic acts often result in ‘unsuccessful’ outcomes such as incarceration. What mechanisms allow some people with relatively high levels of psychopathic traits to live ‘successful’, un-incarcerated lives, in spite of their antisocial tendencies? Using neuroimaging, we...

Psychopathic traits predispose individuals toward antisocial behavior. Such antagonistic acts often result in 'unsuccessful’ outcomes such as incarceration. What mechanisms allow some people with relatively high levels of psychopathic traits to live ‘successful’, un-incarcerated lives, in spite of their antisocial tendencies? Using neuroimaging, we...

People often have to make decisions between immediate rewards and more long‐term goals. Such intertemporal judgments are often investigated in the context of monetary choice or drug use, yet not in regard to aggressive behavior. We combined a novel intertemporal aggression paradigm with functional neuroimaging to examine the role of temporal delay...

Aggression is often measured in the laboratory as an iterative “tit‐for‐tat” sequence, in which two aggressors repeatedly inflict retaliatory harm upon each other. Aggression researchers typically quantify aggression by aggregating across participants’ aggressive behavior on such iterative encounters. However, this “aggregate approach” cannot captu...

People often have to make decisions between immediate rewards and more long-term goals. Such intertemporal judgments are often investigated in the context of monetary choice or drug use, yet not in regards to aggressive behavior. We combined a novel intertemporal aggression paradigm with functional neuroimaging to examine the role of temporal delay...

Sleep quality is a critical component of successful human functioning. Poor sleep quality is associated with aggressive behavior, yet the psychological mechanisms that drive this effect are incompletely understood. We tested the prediction that the association between poor sleep quality and aggression would be explained, in part, by a magnified exp...

Competitive reaction time tasks (CRTTs) have been used widely in social science research, but recent criticism has been directed at the flexible quantification strategies used with this methodology. A recent review suggests that over 150 different quantification strategies have been used in this literature, and there is evidence to suggest that dif...

Sleep quality is a critical component of successful human functioning. Poor sleep quality is associated with aggressive behavior, yet the psychological mechanisms that drive this effect are incompletely understood. We tested the prediction that the association between poor sleep quality and aggression would be explained, in part, by a magnified exp...

Sadism is a “dark” trait that involves the experience of pleasure from others’ pain, yet much is unknown about its link to aggression. Across eight studies (total N = 2,255), sadism predicted greater aggression against both innocent targets and provocateurs. These associations occurred above-and-beyond general aggressiveness, impulsivity, and other...

Sadism is a ‘dark’ trait that involves the experience of pleasure from others’ pain, yet much is unknown about its link to aggression. Across eight studies (total N=2,255), sadism predicted greater aggression against both innocent targets and provocateurs. These associations occurred above-and-beyond general aggressiveness, impulsivity, and other ‘...

The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is a frequently used laboratory measure of aggression. However, the flexibility inherent in its implementation and analysis can undermine its validity. To test whether the TAP is a valid aggression measure irrespective of this flexibility, we conducted two preregistered studies (Study 1 n = 177, Study 2 n = 167)...

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness - defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment - may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively...

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness – defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment – may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively...

The Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) is a frequently-used laboratory measure of aggression. However, the flexibility inherent in its implementation and analysis can undermine its validity. To test whether the TAP is a valid aggression measure irrespective of this flexibility, we conducted two preregistered studies (Study 1 N = 177, Study 2 N = 167)...

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection-aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex's (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection. Using functional MRI, we replicated...

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection-aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex’s (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection. Using functional MRI, we replicated...

Competitive reaction time tasks (CRTTs) have been used widely in social science research, but recent criticism has been directed at the flexible quantification strategies used with this methodology. One estimate suggests that over 150 different quantification strategies have been used, and there is evidence to suggest that different operationalizat...

Alcohol use and abuse (e.g., binge drinking) are among the most reliable causes of aggressive behavior. Conversely, people with aggressive dispositions (e.g., intermittent explosive disorder) are at greater risk for subsequent substance abuse. Yet it remains unknown why aggression might promote subsequent alcohol use. Both aggressive acts and alcoh...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration is often preceded by perceived interpersonal provocations such as slights, insults, and rejections. Yet the neural mechanisms that link provocation to IPV remain unclear. In the context of interactions with strangers, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) has been repeatedly shown to respond to provocation...

Background: Understanding why individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) ruminate on prior provocations, despite its negative outcomes, is crucial to improving interventions. Provocation-focused rumination may be rewarding in the short term by amplifying anger and producing feelings of justification, validation, and increased energy, w...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration is often preceded by perceived interpersonal provocations such as slights, insults, and rejections. Yet the neural mechanisms that link provocation to IPV remain unclear. In the context of interactions with strangers, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) has been repeatedly shown to respond to provocation...

People differ in how much they seek retribution for interpersonal insults, slights, rejections, and other antagonistic actions. Identifying individuals who are most prone towards such revenge-seeking is a theoretically-informative and potentially violence-reducing endeavor. However, we have yet to understand the extent to which revenge-seeking indi...

People differ in how much they seek retribution for interpersonal insults, slights, rejections, and other antagonistic actions. Identifying individuals who are most prone towards such revenge-seeking is a theoretically-informative and potentially violence-reducing endeavor. However, we have yet to understand the extent to which revenge-seeking indi...

What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using vox...

What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using vox...

We introduce a new measure of sub-clinical self-harm tendencies, the Voodoo Doll Self-Injury Task (VDSIT). In this computer task, participants virtually stick a number of sharp pins in a doll that represents themselves. Across five community and undergraduate samples who were not recruited based on their self-harm history or risk (total N = 1,289),...

We introduce a new measure of sub-clinical self-harm tendencies, the Voodoo Doll Self-Injury Task (VDSIT). In this computer task, participants virtually stick a number of sharp pins in a doll that represents themselves. Across five community and undergraduate samples who were not recruited based on their self-harm history or risk (total N = 1,289),...

Aggressive behavior hurts us all and is studied across psychology’s sub-disciplines. Classical theories discuss the causes of aggression in the context of negative affect (e.g., frustration, pain). However, more recent research implicates positive affect as an important correlate and cause of aggression. Such aggressive pleasure likely evolved from...

Aggressive behavior hurts us all and is studied across psychology's sub-disciplines. Classical theories discuss the causes of aggression in the context of negative affect (e.g., frustration, pain). However, more recent research implicates positive affect as an important correlate and cause of aggression. Such aggressive pleasure likely evolved from...

Aggressive behavior hurts us all and is studied across psychology’s subdisciplines. Classical theories discuss the causes of aggression in the context of negative affect (e.g., frustration, pain). However, more recent research implicates positive affect as an important correlate and cause of aggression. Such aggressive pleasure likely evolved from...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a paradoxical combination of affection and aggression. So why do people show an all-too-frequent tendency to harm their loved ones? Towards answering this question, we review a broad literature that explicates the ultimate and proximate roots of IPV perpetration. At the ultimate level, IPV perpetration is likely t...

Impulsivity is a multifaceted trait with substantial implications for human well-being. One facet of impulsivity is negative urgency, the tendency to act impulsively in response to negative affect. Correlational evidence suggests that negative affect magnifies impulsive behavior among individuals with greater negative urgency, yet causal evidence f...

How does emotion explain the relationship between social rejection and aggression? Rejection reliably damages mood, leaving individuals motivated to repair their negatively valenced affective state. Retaliatory aggression is often a pleasant experience. Rejected individuals may then harness revenge’s associated positive affect to repair their mood....

Why do not people behave aggressively? Most people experience aggressive urges, but they restrain their wish to lash out. Self-regulation helps make this possible. This chapter discusses two approaches to understanding the relationship between self-regulation and aggression. Using the strength model of self-regulation as a starting point, we review...

Exclusion is a social phenomenon that reliably causes negative consequences for the excluded. From aggression to self-control failure, exclusion yields several maladaptive dividends. However, neuroscience research has peered inside the mechanics of exclusion’s effects, yielding many valuable insights. The chief contribution of the neuroscience of e...

Background: Alcohol abuse is a common and costly practice. Individuals high in negative urgency, the tendency to act rashly when experiencing negative emotions, are at particular risk for abusing alcohol. Alcohol abuse among individuals high in negative urgency may be due to (a) increased activity in the brain's striatum, (b) decreased activity in...

Binge eating is a hallmark feature of several types of eating disorders, including bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa (binge/purge type), and binge-eating disorder, and is associated with numerous harmful consequences. For decades, researchers have sought to understand what maintains and reinforces this behavior in the face of such profound negative...

Physical pain motivates the healing of somatic injuries, yet it remains unknown whether social pain serves a similarly reparative function toward social injuries. Given the substantial overlap between physical and social pain, we predicted that social pain would mediate the effect of rejection on greater motivation for social reconnection and affil...

Aggression is a dynamic and costly feature of human behavior. One reliable cause of aggression is social rejection, though the underlying mechanisms of this effect remain to be fully understood. Previous research has identified two psychological processes that are independently linked to aggressive retaliation: pain and pleasure. Given recent findi...

Binge eating in women with bulimia nervosa (BN) is thought to be maintained through negative reinforcement: individuals experience a reduction in negative mood during and/or after binge eating. Recent findings, however, suggest that women may experience an increase in negative mood following binge eating episodes, thus casting doubt on this reinfor...

Individuals with genotypes that code for reduced dopaminergic brain activity often exhibit a predisposition towards aggression. However, it remains largely unknown how dopaminergic genotypes may increase aggression. Lower-functioning dopamine systems motivate individuals to seek reward from external sources such as illicit drugs and other risky exp...

Most of daily life hums along peacefully but provocations tip the balance toward aggression. Negative feelings are often invoked to explain why people lash out after an insult. Yet people might retaliate because provocation makes aggression hedonically rewarding. To test this alternative hypothesis, 69 participants underwent fMRI while they complet...