Prof. Skyler HAWK
Lab Director | Department of Educational Psychology
Professor HAWK received a Bachelor of Science Degree from Drake University. He then obtained Masters degrees in Social Psychology (University of Hawaii-Manoa) and Adolescent Development (Utrecht University). He received his Ph.D. in Experimental Social Psychology from the University of Amsterdam, examining the topics of emotion expression and empathy.
He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Utrecht University's Research Centre for Adolescent Development, where he studied the role of empathy in parent-child conflict resolution, as well as the development of adolescent privacy and experiences of parental privacy invasion.
His current areas of research interest and specialization include:
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Privacy, disclosure and secrecy in close relationships
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Emotion communication, emotion regulation, and empathy
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Social networking behavior and media use in adolescence
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Sexual development
Natalie WONG
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Natalie WONG received her Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on lifespan social-emotional development, with both theoretical and intervention research published in leading journals, including Computers in Human Behavior, Personality and Individual Differences, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Journal of Adolescence, and the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. She is particularly interested in multi-method and cross-cultural approaches to understanding social-emotional and moral development across both digital and offline ecologies, examining how AI and technology intersect with psychological, familial, societal, and cultural factors. Natalie currently collaborates with the United Nations University, UN Women, the Asian Development Bank, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong on several interdisciplinary grant-funded projects. These include research on AI as a digital public good for human development, cybersecurity challenges faced by women in South Asia, and perceptions of ethics surrounding the use of AI in education.
Xueqing YUAN
Ph.D. Student
Xueqing YUAN received a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology at Lingnan Normal University. She received her Master's degree in Applied Psychology at Guangzhou University in 2024. She is currently a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Psychology at CUHK. Her research interests include adolescents’ problematic social media use, parenting behaviors, and prosocial behaviors.
Leyi ZHUANG
Ph.D. Student
Leyi ZHUANG received a Masters degree in Psychology from Fudan University in 2024. She is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Psychology at CUHK. Her research interests include emotion regulation and intimate partner violence in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Shisang PENG
Ph.D. Student
Shisang PENG s a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Psychology at the CUHK, where she also earned her MPhil in Educational Psychology in 2023. Her research focuses on the developmental implications of youth information management, particularly in terms of how adolescents’ daily engagement in disclosure and concealment relates to their adjustment and family functioning. She is also interested in the role of psychological control in family relationships and its impact on both adolescent and parent adjustment. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Youth and Family at Utrecht University from January to April 2025. She also participated in the 2025 EARA–EADP–SRA Summer School in Anupriškės, Lithuania.
Andy Hoi On CHO
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) Student
Andy Hoi On CHO is currently a second-year Education Doctorate (Ed.D.) student in Educational Psychology at CUHK. He received a Master of Social Sciences degree in Psychology of Education at City University of Hong Kong (with distinction). With over 10 years of teaching experience in secondary and tertiary education, he recognizes that parental involvement is one of the significant factors that can alter student’s development in various aspects. His research examines how parental characteristics such as the amount of care, emotional stability, and empathy predict children’s social and emotional development, particularly in terms of perseverance and coping.
Lab Alumni
Yueqi WANG
Lab Alumnus
Yueqi WANG received her Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Psychology at the Southern Medical University in 2018. She received her Master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology from Peking University in 2022. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2025. Her research interests include parental monitoring, parental intrusiveness, and emotional development in adolescence and emerging adulthood. During her Ph.D. studies, she was a visiting scholar at the Department of Youth and Family at Utrecht University from January to April 2024. She also participated in the 2024 EARA–EADP–SRA Summer School, Cyprus.
Ying WANG
Lab Alumnus
Ying WANG received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2024, where her research focused on adolescents' narcissistic traits and how they predict both antisocial and prosocial behavior on social media. Prior to that, she obtained a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Beijing Normal University. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, where her research focuses on how individual characteristics and contextual factors interact to influence human development from early childhood through adolescence. She is also interested in children’s and adolescents’ screen use and social media behaviors.
Yue WANG
Lab Alumnus
Yue WANG eceived a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy and Master of Science degree in psychology from Sun Yat-Sen University. She joined the REALife lab in 2021 and received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2024, focusing on dynamic processes between adolescents and their mothers in Chinese families using intensive longitudinal data spanning days to months. She was a visiting scholar to Erasmus University Rotterdam in Spring 2021, working with Prof. Loes Keijsers and Dr. Savannah Boele. Yue received the Grand Way Scholarship in 2023. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, advised by Professor Yao Zheng. Her current research examines cross-timescale dynamics, investigating how daily fluctuations in adolescent well-being and parenting practices interconnect with long-term development. Find more information on her website www.ywangishere.com.
Wenqing ZONG
Lab Alumnus
Wenqing ZONG received a Master of Arts in Linguistics from CUHK in 2017. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2022, where her research focused on maternal envy and intrusive parenting in Mainland Chinese families. Her research interests include emotion regulation, parenting behavior, and psycholinguistics. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her current research topic is Chinese parental psychological control and adolescents’ developmental outcomes.
Yingqian WANG
Lab Alumnus
Yingqian WANG received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2019. During her Ph.D. studies, she participated in an academic exchange at the Department of Youth and Family at Utrecht University. Her Ph.D. research mainly focused on the role of youth's emotion regulation flexibility in promoting healthy peer relationships. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. Her current research continues to focus on adolescents, with a particular interest in social mobility beliefs and academic development.
Yan ZHANG
Lab Alumnus
Yan ZHANG received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from CUHK in 2017, where her research focused on the development of Chinese adolescents’ materialistic values. She received the Hong Kong Government Reaching Out Award (2016), the CUHK Grand Way Scholarship (2017), and the Golden Jubilee Postgraduate Scholarship (2017). She participated in an academic exchange to the Department of Youth and Family at Utrecht University in 2016. She is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Media and Communication at Shenzhen University and is the division head of the Department of Advertising. Her interests revolve around affective, cognitive, and environmental factors that facilitate consumption behaviors, social media use, and identification with pop culture. She was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Education in China.
Meet Our Team
Nan ZHU
Lab Alumnus
Nan ZHU received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2017. He participated in an academic exchange to the University of Rochester in 2016. He held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Macau from 2018-2022, where he now works as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology. With a central goal of understanding how multidimensional environmental risks shapes individual differences and cross-cultural variations in sociomoral processes, his research covers topics such as moral judgments and reasoning, sexism, psychosocial distance and trust, leadership preferences, and parent-child dynamics. He pursues a theoretical understanding of these various topics using the life history theory, the dual-process theory of morality, and the social domain theory, aiming for a holistic understanding of these phenomena on the basis of physiological, cognitive, developmental, and sociocultural mechanisms.
Past and Current Lab Assistants
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Junxuan (Jason) LI
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Charlotte Ka Ching YU
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Wenqing ZONG
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Zalman CHAN
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Jocelyn WONG
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Bonnie YUEN
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Jiayu (Anna) ZHANG
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Yizhe (Ryan) GUO