Research
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:
(1) How do we view ourselves across the past, present, and future?
(2) 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.
From Past to Future: Self-Continuity
Self-continuity, the perceived connectedness with our past and future selves at different time points, is a cornerstone of self-identity. It is associated with preventive decisions, health-promoting behaviors, life satisfaction, and well-being at both individual and societal levels, while lower self-continuity is linked to depression and suicidal ideation (Sedikides et al., 2023). Yet, our understanding of how self-continuity varies across contexts remains limited. To address this gap and inform both implications for subjective well-being and health policies, my research investigates the temporal pattern of self-continuity across age, culture, and major life transitions.Selected Work
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: Series B. [Link]
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. [Link]
Lu, Y., Ghose, U., Gerstorf, D., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2026). Age, Preceding Health Changes, and the Temporal Structure of Self–Continuity. Psychology and Aging.
The Self in Decision-Making
How we perceive ourselves plays a vital role in shaping our decisions. For older adults, age-related changes in cognitive resources present unique challenges to decision-making. In response, I examine how older adults’ view of future selves and their age group influence decision-making in intertemporal and risky contexts.Selected Work
Lu, Y., Rutt, J., Thomas, M., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (2025). Modeling temporal self-continuity and its association with temporal discounting. Personality and Individual Differences. [Link]
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 Journal of Gerontology: Series B
Age Differences in Social Decisions
According to the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, 1992), as people age, they prioritize their social and emotional goals. This shift has important implications for older adults’ judgment and decision-making, particularly given their heightened vulnerability to elder abuse and financial fraud. My ongoing work aims to uncover the age-related differences in judgments and decisions in social contexts.Selected Work
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. [Link]
Lu, Y., Goscicki, B., & Löckenhoff, C. E. (in revision). Age differences in social discounting and charitable giving in a U.S. sample.
Lu, Y.*, Lin, H.* Löckenhoff, C. E., Zhang, X., & Fung, H. H. (in revision). Age differences in social discounting and charitable giving in the U.S. and China.
Overcoming Limitations of Existing Research
Applying advanced methods to research. My doctoral research 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.
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.
“… any person … any study.”
--- Ezra Cornell