Marc Sestir
Associate Professor of Psychology
MAS 208
(501) 450-5433
Getting to Know Dr. Sestir
Introduction
I was born and raised in Northern New York and spent time living in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Western New York and now Arkansas. I work as a social psychologist who primarily studies the effects of media and technology use on self-image, well-being and perceptions.
Where did you get your degrees?
BA from University of Rochester
Masters and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
What year did you start working in the department?
August 2012
What classes do you regularly teach?
Statistics, Social Psychology, Research Apprenticeship, and Media Psychology
Do you have any hobbies, interests, or unique facts you would like to share?
I enjoy playing and watching basketball, hiking (but not watching it), horror, sci-fi, and historical books and movies, and playing on my Switch.
What are your scholarly and/or applied interests?
The effects of media consumption on thinking, emotion and behavior. Particularly interested in narrative influence and the growing role of AI in generating content.
Dr. Sestir’s Recent Publications:
Sestir, M.A., Kennedy, L.A., Peszka, J.J., & Bartley, J.G. (2021). New statistics, old schools: An overview of current introductory undergraduate and graduate practices. Teaching of Psychology, 0(0), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/00986283211030616
Sestir, M. A. (2020). Home is just a phone away: Mobile phones and severity of social pain experiences. Poetics, 83, 101483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2020.101483
Peszka, J., Sestir, M. A., Kennedy, L. A., & Mastin, D. F. (2023). The relationships between general technology use, technology use at bedtime, and sleep. Manuscript in preparation.
Kennedy, L.A., Peszka, J.P., & Sestir, M.A. (2024, January). Teaching Null Hypothesis Significance Testing: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Participant Idea Exchange (PIE) presented at the 2024 National Institute of the Teaching of Psychology conference, Ft. Myers, FL.