Vincent Bégin

Assistant professor, département de psychoéducation, Université de Sherbrooke

Regular member

Training
  • (2021) Postdoctorate (Criminology). Université de Montréal
  • (2020) Postdoctorat (Educational & Counselling Psychology). Université McGill
  • (2019) Doctorate (Psychoeducation). Université de Sherbrooke
  • (2016) Master's (Psychoeducation). Université de Sherbrooke
  • (2013) Bachelor's (Psychoeducation). Université de Sherbrooke
Bio

At a very young age, I was fascinated by the idea of individual differences. I remember very clearly wondering how my peers could be so different from each other, even though they often lived in very similar family, school and social environments. In adolescence and early adulthood, my questions multiplied and my academic path became clearer. Finally, I chose psychoeducation to find answers to my questions.

From the beginning of the program, my interest in working with adolescents with significant behavioural difficulties led me to want to better understand the reality of these young people, who are all very different from one another. The questions that had followed me from boyhood naturally led me to the study of early manifestations of certain personality traits as a way to better understand these difficulties. What I hadn’t realized was that for each answer I found, ten new questions would emerge. I was hooked: I had discovered research and its possibilities.

My current research focus is to explain chronic antisocial behaviour that occurs in childhood through psychopathic traits (e.g., low empathy, insensitivity, narcissism, irresponsibility) and their interaction with children’s social environments. The questions I ask myself today as a researcher concern the continuity of these traits in children and across generations, their clinical usefulness for professionals working with young people with behavioural difficulties, and the role of environmental factors in shaping them. This work falls within the scope of Axes 1 and 2 of GRISE.

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