Dr Huijing Lu received rigorous training in psychology with a BS degree and a MPhil degree from Peking University and a PhD degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She conducts research in the areas of evolutionary and developmental psychology, focusing on mating, parenting, and social and cognitive development within the evolutionary life history (LH) framework.

Because of obligatory parental investment, women are more concerned about parental investment than men. However, because of the conflict of interest between the two sexes in raising the young as public goods, Dr Lu and her coauthors developed and tested the hypothesis that both men and women discount or withhold their parental investment when they perceive their own mate values to be higher than their partners’. Her research concludes that compatible mate values between the two sexual partners in an assortative union are adaptive in maximising parental investment from both parties, and the trade-off between parenting and mating shapes long-term sexual relationships as well women’s mate preference and sexual interest throughout the ovulatory cycle.

Dr Lu’ research also focuses on child and adolescent development. Phylogenetically and ontogenetically growing up amid the wrestling conflict of interest between the parents and in the larger environment of various extent of harshness and unpredictability, children calibrate LH strategies that are adaptive to their micro and macro environments and manifest in their cognitions and behaviours including sharing, understanding others’ mind, deceiving and self-deceiving, risking-taking, and antagonistic and affiliative social interactions.

Focusing on this and other research, Dr Lu has been awarded competitive grants from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC), the University Grant Council (UGC), the Central Policy Unit of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Family Welfare Society. Dr Lu plays active roles in professional services. She is an Assessment Panel Member (H Panel) for RGC, Competitive Research Funding Schemes for the Local Self-financing Degree Sector. She also serves on the editorial board of Personality and Individual Differences and as an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology section, and Acta Psychologica, Lifespan Development section.

• PhD, Evolutionary Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• M.Phil., Developmental Psychology, Peking University
• B.S., Psychology, Peking University