Dacher Keltner is the author of Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life. He is also the author of Social Psychology, with Tom Gilovich and Richard Nisbett; Understanding Emotions (2nd edition), with Keith Oatley and Jennifer Jenkins; and The Compassionate Instinct, with Jason Marsh and Jeremy Smith. In addition to his scientific writing, Professor Keltner has written for the Utne Reader and the New York Times Magazine. Among many teaching and research awards, he was recently named by the Utne Reader as one of 50 visionaries for 2008.

Professor Keltner is also founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. After its creation, he secured funding from the Herb Alpert Foundation and the Quality of Life Foundation to develop a magazine, web site, and speaker series that translates the theories, insights, findings, and practices of the social psychology of compassion and cooperation for a broad audience of educators, policy makers, health care providers, and interested citizens.

Primary Interests:

Aggression, Conflict, Peace
Applied Social Psychology
Close Relationships
Emotion, Mood, Affect
Evolution and Genetics
Group Processes
Helping, Prosocial Behavior
Intergroup Relations
Interpersonal Processes
Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
Nonverbal Behavior

Aggression, Conflict, Peace
Applied Social Psychology
Close Relationships
Emotion, Mood, Affect
Evolution and Genetics
Group Processes
Helping, Prosocial Behavior

Intergroup Relations
Interpersonal Processes
Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
Nonverbal Behavior

Research Group or Laboratory:

Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory
Interactive Map

Books:

Journal Articles:

Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (in press). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin.
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (1999). Social functions of emotions at multiple levels of analysis. Cognition and Emotion, 13(5), 505-522.
Keltner, D., Horberg, E. J., & Oveis, C. (2006). Emotional intuitions and moral play. Social Justice Research, 19, 208-217.
Keltner, D., Van Kleef, G. A., Chen, S., & Kraus, M. W. (2008). A reciprocal influence model of social power: Emerging principles and lines of inquiry. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 151-192.

Other Publications:

Keltner, D., Horberg, E. J., & Oveis, C. (2006). Emotions as moral intuitions. In J. P. Forgas (Ed.), Affect in social thinking and behavior (pp. 161-175). New York: Psychology Press.
Keltner, D., & Lerner, J. S. (in press). Emotion. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindsay (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Keltner, D., & Oveis, C. (2007). Elevation. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Encyclopedia of social psychology (Vol. 1, p. 283). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Courses Taught:

Evolution of Ethics
Graduate Seminar on Human Emotion
Human Emotion
Human Happiness
Introduction to Social Psychology
Social Conflict
Social Psychology Graduate Core Course

Evolution of Ethics
Graduate Seminar on Human Emotion
Human Emotion
Human Happiness

Introduction to Social Psychology
Social Conflict
Social Psychology Graduate Core Course

Note from the Network: The holder of this profile has certified having all necessary rights, licenses, and authorization to post the files listed below. Visitors are welcome to copy or use any files for noncommercial or journalistic purposes provided they credit the profile holder and cite this page as the source.

Image Gallery

Photo of Dacher Keltner

541.46KB

Dacher Keltner
Department of Psychology
3210 Tolman Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720
United States

Phone: (510) 642-5368