Know Thyself

If (hu)man is the measure of all things, what is the measure of human?

Meta-Self Lab

School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University

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Welcome to the Meta-Self Lab!

The lab is led by Prof., Dr., Hu Chuan-Peng at the School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China. We are interested in how human beings process self-related information, with a “3M” approach: meta-science, (cognitive) modeling, and (psychological) measurement. We are also trying to apply the “3M” approach to the mental health issues in the real world.

We values openness, transparency, and reproducibility. As the methods and practices in psychological science are ever-evolving, we keep learning new methods and adopting best practices to make our research as rigorous and robust as possible. Whenever possible, we use open source software such as jsPsych, Python, and R for our research. All our work are preprinted before submission. Whenever possible, we preregister our studies before data collection/analyses.

So far, we have contributed multiple open datasets: data for Human Penguin Project (data; data paper, & original study); data of Chinese Version of Free Will and Determinism Plus Scale (data, data paper, original study, and updated study in 2024); a meta-dataset of neuroimaging studies of self-referential process of human (dataset, data paper; related paper and its ALE maps); an extended Chinese social evaluative words list (data, data paper, and code); and an evolving trial-level data from studies that employed self-matching task (dataset). Please see our publications or google scholar for the preprints.

Equality is another core value of our lab. We are dedicated to fostering a culture where everyone involved is respected and every idea is valued.

Research Fields

Metascience

the use of scientific methodology to study science itself

Self-Cognition

A knowledge representation that contains knowledge about us

Modeling

a mathematical model that embodies a set of statistical assumptions concerning the generation of sample data

Team

Hu Chuan-Peng

the Principal Investigator of Chuanpeng Lab

Dongxu Lv

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
Live my life to the fullest.

Haoyuan Wang

Sep. 2017 ~ Now
Just want an easy life

Jiaqi Wu

Sep. 2023 ~ Now
Keep it simple and stupid.

Ruizhe Zhang

Sep. 2023 ~ Now
The proactive person enjoys the world first.

Shanshan ZHU

Sep. 2023 ~ Now
Life is a wilderness, not a track

Siyu Chen

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
The unexamined life is not worth living.

Siyu Wu

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
Dance to work

Sun Xinru

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
Have the freedom and the courage to be yourself

Wanke Pan

Sep. 2023 ~ Now
Beneath the hanging rainbow in the sky, the joyful strong wind comes from the sea.

Weibiao Liu

Jul. 2022 ~ Now
Grit is my trait！

Xueyang Zhu

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
feel something you obviously did

YuKi (Mengzhen Hu)

Jun. 2022 ~ Now
>That just happened

Zhaoli Fan

Sep. 2025 ~ Now
It’s not a big deal.

Zhenxin Cai

Sep. 2024 ~ Now
There is only one heroism in the world, to see the world as it is and to love it.

Ziwei Ren

Sep. 2025 ~ Now
I go beyond what I ever imagined.

Chengdong Xu

Jan. 2021 ~ May. 2022
RA at Beijing Normal University

Chenghao Zhou

Nov. 2020 ~ Dec. 2022
Now studying cognitive psychology at NYU. Interested in decision making and human interaction.

Chennan Wu

Sep. 2019 ~ Jun. 2023
I’m a 2019 undergraduate student at School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, a time lag effect believer, a stable ISTJ. I approach life with an experiencial mindset.

Hejia Sun

Sep. 2020 ~ Jun. 2024
I’m living in a fascinating planet.

Helen (Zheng Liu)

Oct. 2020 ~ Jul. 2022
Laziness is the true mother of coding.

Jiachen Liu

Jun. 2022 ~ Jun. 2024
The former advertising director, who loves digital,film and design, is now working hard for user research.

Jiachen Ma

Sep. 2021 ~ Jun. 2023
a curious student, fascinated by how the mind works

Jiahui Wen

Sep. 2022 ~ Jun. 2025
Take it easy and keep it going.

Jixing Yin

Jan. 2016 ~ Dec. 2022
RA at West China Hospital of Sichuan University

Liuqing Tian

Jun. 2022 ~ Jun. 2024
I am curious about new things. Reading books is my favourite activity.

Nan Wang

Sep. 2019 ~ Jun. 2023
to study language, mind, and cognition in its entirety

Qinglan Liu

Sep. 2012 ~ Jun. 2020
Researcher of Beijing Youse Technology Co., Ltd

Shuting Sun

Sep. 2021 ~ Jun. 2024
Interested in differences between people and brain plasticity.Love exploring new things.

Yi Ding

Aug. 2015 ~ Sep. 2018
a doctoral student at Tohoku University, study self-evaluation, social cognition

Yikang Liu

Sep. 2022 ~ Jun. 2025
I love cats

Yuanrui Zheng

Sep. 2019 ~ Jun. 2023
I don’t mind not knowing. It doesn’t scare me. - Richard Feynman

Yue Hu

Sep. 2022 ~ Jun. 2023
Current research: perceptual decision-making

Yuqing Cai

Mar. 2018 ~ Dec. 2022
a doctoral student at Utrecht University, study visual perception, attention, and pupil measurement; also interested in socio-economic status and open science related research

Zhipeng Qiu (Cesare)

Sep. 2023 ~ Jun. 2025
Live in the moment.

Publications

Lulu Li, Qingrong Cheng, Hu Chuan-Peng

June, 2025 In Behav. Res. Methods

An Extended Chinese Social Evaluative Word List

Social evaluation, i.e., people’s views of self, others, and groups, is ubiquitous and embedded in our language. In turn, social evaluative words are used intensively in studies of human social evaluation. However, standardized Chinese word lists for social evaluation are under-developed; the only available word lists are based on the big-two model of social evaluation (i.e., agency and warmth) and cover small numbers of words. To fill the gap, we conducted a survey with a relatively large sample (n = 1270, 50% female) and a large number of words (1908) that might describe extended social evaluative dimensions: appearance, socioeconomic status, sociability, competence, and morality. The participants rated the extent to which each word described a certain social evaluation dimension and how positive/negative each word was. Based on this dataset, we selected words that dominantly describe one of the five above-mentioned dimensions. The final word list has 1040 words, including 245 appearance words (143 positive, 11 neutral, 91 negative), 108 socioeconomic status words (36 positive, 2 neutral, 70 negative), 93 sociability words (53 positive, 5 neutral, 35 negative), 261 competence words (185 positive, 4 neutral, 72 negative), and 333 morality words (149 positive, 1 neutral, 183 negative). This word list provides an extended Chinese social evaluative word list and will serve as a useful resource for researchers in social psychology, linguistics, sociology, and computational social science.

Wanke Pan, Haiyang Geng, Lei Zhang, Alexander Fengler, Michael J. Frank, Ru-Yuan Zhang, Hu Chuan-Peng

February, 2025 In AMPPS

dockerHDDM: A User-Friendly Environment for Bayesian Hierarchical Drift-Diffusion Modeling

Drift-diffusion models (DDMs) are pivotal in understanding evidence-accumulation processes during decision-making across psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychiatry.

See all publications