Yifei Lu

Yifei Lu investigates the mechanisms underlying meaningful social connection, with a particular focus on how individual and contextual differences influence interaction processes and outcomes.

Yifei Lu is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. She is broadly interested in using ecologically valid methods to uncover how social interaction dynamics unfold across different individuals and contexts. She also hopes to employ and advance mobile methods when appropriate to gain deeper insights into people’s daily social lives.

Before joining Annenberg, she worked with Dr. Joseph Bayer at the Ohio State University in the Mobile Social Cognition lab, studying how our cognition (e.g., who are more salient on one’s mind) changes due to mobile and social technologies. At Annenberg, she would be keen on exploring the role of curiosity in social contexts.