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My research centers on two interconnected aspects of the aging process: self-continuity and decision-making, and their implications for lifelong well-being. These topics address fundamental questions of everyday life:
● How do we view ourselves across the past, present, and future?
● How do we make decisions that shape our future?
To do so, I combine quantitative methodologies with qualitative evidence, including behavioral experiments, large-scale online surveys, and text responses, and apply advanced statistical models to uncover nuanced patterns in the data.
Self-Continuity
Self-Continuity
Selected Work
Lu, Ghose, et al. (2026)
Lu & Löckenhoff (2024)
Social Judgement
Social Judgement
Selected Work
Lu, Goscicki, et al. (2026)
Lu, Chen, et al. (2021)
Decision-Making
Decision-Making
Selected Work
Lu, Liao, et al. (2026)
Lu, Rutt, et al. (2025)
Journal Articles
Journal Articles
Lu, Y.*, Lin, H.*, Löckenhoff, C. E., Zhang, X., & Fung, H. H. (Accepted). Culture, age, and prosociality: Social discounting and charitable giving in the U.S. and China. Psychology and Aging.
Lu, Y., Goscicki, B., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2026). Age differences in social discounting and charitable giving in the U.S. The Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbag072.
Lu, Y., Ghose, U., Gerstorf, D., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2026). Age, preceding health changes, and the temporal structure of self-continuity. Psychology and Aging. doi.org/10.1037/pag0000989.
Lu, Y.*, Liao, S.*, Ma, G., Guo, Z., Li, T., Zhou, Y., Sun, Y. Y., & Zhang, X. (2026). The impact of age-related stereotypes on risky decision-making in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task: Shifts in prior beliefs rather than loss aversion. The Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences. doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbag045
Lu, Y., Rutt, J., Thomas, M., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2025). Modeling temporal self-continuity and its association with temporal discounting. Personality and Individual Differences, 246, 13354. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2025.113354
Lu, Y. & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2024). Differences in the temporal extension of self-continuity over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Self and Identity, 23(5-6), 505-520. doi: 10.1080/15298868.2024.2400732.
Lu, Y., Gerstorf, D., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2023). Age differences in self-continuity in the U.S. and Germany: The role of temporal direction, temporal distance, and demographics. The Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 78(5), 841-846. doi: 10.1093/geronb/gbad002
Lu, Y., Chen, C., Yin, X., Xu, Y., & Zhang, X. (2021). Viewing time and facial trustworthiness perception: Giving it a second thought may not work for older adults. PsyCh Journal, 10(5), 805-815. doi: 10.1002/pchj.469
Book Chapters
Book Chapters
Lu, Y. & Löckenhoff, C. E. (Invited). Self-Continuity. In D. Gu and M. E. Dupre (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging (2nd Edition). Springer-Nature.
Chang, Y., Lu, Y., & Zhang, X. (2019). Subjective well-being. In D. Gu and M. E. Dupre (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer-Nature. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_837-1
Open Science Practices
Open Science Practices
I am committed to conducting transparent and reproducible research and share my pre-registrations, analysis scripts, study materials, and/or data through publication supplements and platforms, including AsPredicted.org and OSF.io.
My research also employed advanced quantitative methods to investigate age-related differences in self-continuity and decision-making. These approaches address methodological gaps in prior literature, allow for the detection of nuanced effects, and enable deeper investigation into the mechanisms underlying observed age differences.
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