Dacher Keltner
- Media Contact
Dacher Keltner is a full professor at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab (http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~keltner/.) and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu). Dacher’s research focuses the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, emotional expression, and power, social class, and inequality. Dacher is the co-author of two textbooks, as well as the best-selling Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Compassionate Instinct, and the The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence from Penguin Press in 2016. Dacher has also written for the New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The London Times, and Utne Reader. Of late he has taken delight in translating Social Psychology outside of the lab, serving as a consultant for Pixar’s Inside Out, and at Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter.
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
Research Group or Laboratory:
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Image Gallery
Video Gallery
Doing the Unprecedented
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18:16 Doing the Unprecedented
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6:17 The Vagus Nerve
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7:55 Touch
Length: 7:55
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7:49 How Do Humans Gain Power? By Sharing It
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56:39 The Power Paradox: Toward Stronger Human Hierarchies
Length: 56:39
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29:42 Toward a Science and Culture of Awe
Length: 29:42
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6:04 The Importance of Narrative
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56:15 The Power Paradox: The Promise and Peril of 21st Century Power
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53:57 Survival of the Kindest
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27:12 The Psychology of Power
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4:14 The Evolution of Emotions
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1:09:02 The Science of Pixar's "Inside Out"
Length: 1:09:02
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1:51 The Importance of Physical Contact
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1:02:14 How to Change Your Mind
Length: 1:02:14
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14:47 How Being Powerful Works
Length: 14:47
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5:20 The Biological Effects of Sympathy, Gratitude, and Awe
Length: 5:20
Additional Videos
Books:
- Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., Chen, S., & Nisbett, R. (2023). Social psychology (6th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.
- Keltner, D. (2016). The power paradox: How we gain and lose influence. New York: Penguin Press.
- Keltner, D. (2009). Born to be good: The science of a meaningful life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Keltner, D., Oatley, K., & Jenkins, J. (2018). Understanding emotions (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Journal Articles:
- Cordaro, D. T., Keltner, D., Tshering, S., Wangchuk, D., & Flynn, L. M. (2016). The voice conveys emotion in ten globalized cultures and one remote village in Bhutan. Emotion, 16(1), 117-128.
- Goetz, J. L., Keltner, D., & Simon-Thomas, E. (2010). Compassion: An evolutionary analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(3), 351-374.
- Horberg, E. J., Kraus, M. W., & Keltner, D. (2013). Pride displays communicate self-interest and support for meritocracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 24-37.
- Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach and inhibition. Psychological Review, 110, 265-284.
- 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., Kogan, A., Piff, P. K., & Saturn, S. R. (2014).The sociocultural appraisals, values, and emotions (SAVE) framework of prosociality: Core processes from gene to meme. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 425-460.
- 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.
- Kogan, A., Saslow, L., Impett, E.A., Oveis, C., Keltner, D., & Saturn, S. (2011). A thin-slicing study of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene and the evaluation and expression of the prosocial disposition. Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, 108, 19189-19192.
- Kraus, M. W., & Keltner, D. (2013). Social class rank, essentialism, and punitive judgment, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 247-261.
- Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L.,& Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119, 546-572.
- Lerner, J., & Keltner, D. (2001). Fear, anger and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 146-159.
- Piff, P. K., Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., Cheng, B. H., & Keltner, D. (2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99, 771-784.
- Rodrigues, S. M., Saslow, L. R., Garcia, N., John, O. P., & Keltner, D. (2009). Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 21437-21441.
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. (2010). Emotion. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindsay (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
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
Dacher Keltner
Department of Psychology
3210 Tolman Hall
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, California 94720
United States of America
- Phone: (510) 642-5368