[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Ayduk became interested in understanding human behavior in middle school when she began reading books on personality and psychopathology.
[2] She is also a fellow at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, where she served on the grant review panel (2016–2017) and a three-year term on the board of directors (2018–2020).
[2][13][14] Working with Walter Mischel, Ayduk studied the developmental precursors and long-term consequences of children's ability to delay gratification.
[19][16] After twenty years, the children who delayed gratification displayed "more effective, planful, goal-oriented behavior" and had more successful relationships than their peers.
[18] A longitudinal study of another group of preschoolers using cookies instead of marshmallows found those who delayed gratification were more efficient at responding to targets in a go/no-go task performed 10 years later.
[23][24] Ayduk collaborated with Ethan Kross to study self distancing and emotional regulation by empirically distinguishing adaptive from maladaptive forms of self-reflection.
[1] They found indications that people can achieve self distancing by being cued to view their problems through a mental "fly on the wall" perspective.