Dacher Keltner
About Dacher Keltner
Speech topics
Science of a Meaningful Life: Evidence and Wisdom for Health and Happiness
In this talk, Dacher Keltner details the latest scientific thinking about the keys to the meaningful life. This talk begins in a survey of the latest discoveries about human happiness – how beneficial it is for longevity, productivity, societal trust, and strong social collectives. This part of the conversation is anchored in the latest discoveries from neuroscience and health. The talk then turns to evidence-based approaches to the pursuit of the meaningful life, focusing on the latest science and cultural wisdom regarding kindness, mindfulness, gratitude, touch, narrative, and awe and beauty. The talk provides a breathtaking tour of the science of happiness, by a Professor who’s won many research and teaching awards and whose Massive Online Course, “The Science of Happiness” hosted by EdX, has had over 200,000 people enroll. The talk covers the latest neuroscience, actionable practices, and touch upon insights in the humanities, all to stir inquiry in the audience about the meaningful life.
Speaking videos
Books by Dacher Keltner
“Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life” (2023)
Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or our utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? Until recently, there was no science of awe, that feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Revolutionary thinking, though, has shown how humans have survived over the course of evolution thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture—all of which are spurred by awe. In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a sweeping investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive feeling. Revealing new research alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday lives leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. At turns radical and profound, brimming with enlightening and practical insights, Awe is our field guide for how to place this emotion as a vital force within our lives.
“The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence” (2017)
Power is ubiquitous—but totally misunderstood. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, Dr. Dacher Keltner presents the very idea of power in a whole new light, demonstrating not just how it is a force for good in the world, but how—via compassion and selflessness—it is attainable for each and every one of us. It is taken for granted that power corrupts. This is reinforced culturally by everything from Machiavelli to contemporary politics. But how do we get power? And how does it change our behavior? So often, in spite of our best intentions, we lose our hard-won power. Enduring power comes from empathy and giving. Above all, power is given to us by other people. This is what we all too often forget, and it is the crux of the power paradox: by misunderstanding the behaviors that helped us to gain power in the first place we set ourselves up to fall from power. We abuse and lose our power, at work, in our family life, with our friends, because we've never understood it correctly—until now. Power isn't the capacity to act in cruel and uncaring ways; it is the ability to do good for others, expressed in daily life, and in and of itself a good thing. Dr. Keltner lays out exactly—in twenty original "Power Principles"—how to retain power; why power can be a demonstrably good thing; when we are likely to abuse power; and the terrible consequences of letting those around us languish in powerlessness.
“Understanding Emotions” (2013)
Dacher Keltner, Keith Oatley, and Jennifer Jenkins’s Understanding Emotions, 3rd Edition emphasizes the value of emotions and explores the latest research with practical concerns for clinical problems, education and everyday understanding. The text extends across a broad range of disciplines and covers the entire lifespan from infancy to adulthood. It includes sections on the study of emotion, the different elements of emotion, evidence of how emotions govern and organize social life, and emotion and individual functioning, including psychological disorders and wellbeing. Furthermore, the text offers combined chapters on evolutionary and cultural approaches, studies of new expressions (love, desire) as well as new systems of communication (touch, music), findings on emotion and the central nervous systems, and studies on the role of emotion in moral judgment. Discussions of how popular and classical movies emphasize emotions show how to keep an emotion diary to track one’s emotions and interactions. The text includes boxes on emotional intelligence and how to improve it as well as scales of assessing the self. Boxes on emotions in art and literature and positive psychology boxes are also new editions to this issue.
“The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness” (2010)
Where once science painted humans as self-seeking and warlike, today scientists of many disciplines are uncovering the deep roots of human goodness. At the forefront of this revolution in scientific understanding is the Greater Good Science Center, based at the University of California, Berkeley. The center fuses its cutting-edge research with inspiring stories of compassion in action in Greater Good magazine. The best of these writings are collected here, and contributions from Steven Pinker, Robert Sapolsky, Paul Ekman, Michael Pollan, and the Dalai Lama, among others, will make you think not only about what it means to be happy and fulfilled but also what it means to lead an ethical and compassionate life.
“Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life” (2009)
In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short,” why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Illustrated with more than fifty photographs of human emotions, Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy. Positive emotions, Keltner finds, lie at the core of human nature and shape our everyday behavior―and they just may be the key to understanding how we can live our lives better.
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