I am trained as an experimental social psychologist at Geneva University where I received my PhD in 2005 and worked as a Lecturer for a few years. Since 2011 I have been a Full Professor in Social Psychology at Poitiers University. My research focuses on several aspects of social cognition including the self, comparison processes, and the regulation of negative thoughts and emotions. One of my primary lines of research centers on understanding how negative beliefs and expectations (group stereotypes) bias self-evaluation and autobiographical memories. In a related line of work, my colleagues and I examine how the various forms of comparison that individuals explicitly or implicitly engage in shape their cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. This includes comparisons with other individuals (social comparisons), but also mental comparisons between the self and internalized standards (that is, between the actual and the ideal self). Finally, from the perspective of terror management theory, I study how individuals deal with negative thoughts and emotions.

One recent discovery in my research program concerns the direct causal link between failure (negative comparison between the self and the standards) and suicide thought accessibility (Chatard & Selimbegovic, 2011). In several studies, we found that when (normal) individuals realize that they fall short of an important standard, they often show increased accessibility of suicide-related thoughts. Our work suggests that this occurs because failure triggers the goal to escape from self.