Our Research
This research laboratory, directed by Professor Patrick Gaudreau, studies the interplay between motivation, self-regulation, and achievement. We are conducting empirical studies with diversified populations of students and athletes. A central goal of our research program is to understand the role of personality (i.e., perfectionism, optimism), motivational (goals, motives, needs) and self-regulation processes (i.e., goal setting, planning, coping) in facilitating the attainment of personal goals and the development of optimal functioning. Our research tries to delineate how these processes change and evolve across time using longitudinal designs with both correlational and experimental research methods. Our mandate is to generate evidence-based guidelines to promote achievement and well-being across time, situations, and contexts.
Our Mission
- Offer research opportunities to postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate researchers and volunteers with the goal of creating an active group of individuals with common yet complementary research interests.
- Offer high-quality training in psychological science. We are not creators of research methodology but we use sophisticated designs (prospective, longitudinal, diaries) and analyses (SEM, multilevel, linear growth models, mixture models, meta-analysis) to answer our substantive research questions.
- Create partnerships with researchers from other universities and partners from the community to facilitate research, training, and application of new knowledge.
- Communicate our passion for research to students in the hope of training the next generation of researchers in social psychology.
Our Values
- Working in a creative manner to create new knowledge while acknowledging the contribution of our predecessors.
- Create a spirit of collaboration to generate synergies.
- Foster initiatives and the need for autonomy while providing structure and guidance.
- Committed to research and dissemination of our findings.
- A focus on learning: Success is the consequence of learning rather than a goal in itself.
- Openess to other viewpoints and alternative explanations of social phenomenon.
Good News' Corner
Patrick Gaudreau:
- April 2012: Patrick starts his mandate as the associate editor of Anxiety, Stress, and Coping.
- August 2011: Patrick starts his mandate on the editorial board of Psychology of Sport and Exercise.
- August 2011: Two newly accepted articles on the 2 x 2 model of perfectionism in Personality and Individual Differences et Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology.
- May 2011: Patrick receives a SSHRC standard grant to build bridges between motivational and preventive sciences.
Students:
- May 2012: Véronique Franche publishes an article on the 2 x 2 model of perfectionism in Journal of Counseling Psychology.
- May 2012: Congratulations to Véronique Franche for her SSHRC scholarship.
- September 2011: Welcome to Veronique Franche, our new doctoral student in the clinical program.
- August 2011: Congratulations to Marie-Claude Fecteau, M.A., for her prof. position at Cegep de Valleyfield.
- August 2011: Amanda Thompson publishes an article in Quality of Life Research.
- August 2011: Natasha Carraro publishes an article in Journal of Applied Social Psychology.