Dacher Keltner

Dacher Keltner’s research focuses the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, and beauty, and power, social class, and inequality. As a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Lab, he is a leading scholar in the study of emotion, including a new project on awe around the globe, as well as power, class, and inequality.

Keltner also serves as the Faculty Director of the Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. In 2020, along with Michael Pollan and others, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. The center conducts research using psychedelics to investigate cognition, perception and emotion and their biological bases in the human brain. In addition, Keltner is Chief Scientific Advisor at Hume AI.

Keltner is the author of The Power Paradox, as well as the bestseller Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassionate Instinct. He has published over 190 scientific articles, including seminal works on the psychology of awe (Keltner & Haidt, 2003) and is the co-author of two textbooks. He is also co-editor of The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, London Times, and Utne Reader, and his research has been covered in TIME, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and the BBC as well as many other outlets. His bestselling book Awe: The New Science Of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life was called "destined to become a classic" by Library Journal in their starred review.

Dacher Keltner has collaborated on projects at Facebook and Google and served as scientific consultant for the Pixar films Inside Out and Inside Out 2. He is featured in Tom Shadyac's documentary I Am. He is the host of The Science of Happiness podcast which has 50 million downloads and was ranked a top health podcast by Apple Podcasts and a top 10 wellness podcast by Oprah Magazine. Wired magazine has rated the podcasts of his “Human Emotion” course as one of the five best academic podcasts in the country. He appeared on episode 4 of Will Smith’s Pole to Pole as he helped the actor explore happiness in the villages of Bhutan. The Jim Henson Company's 2026 PBS Kids special Wowsabout was "rooted in a rich curriculum developed by Dr. Dacher Keltner."

Dacher Keltner is an outstanding speaker who has received several national research and teaching awards. He has twice presented his research to His Holiness the Dalai Lama as part of a continuing dialogue between the Dalai Lama and scientists. Keltner has received outstanding teacher and research mentor awards from UC Berkeley, and seen 20 of his PhD students and post-doctoral fellows become professors. The Utne Reader named Keltner as one of its 50 Visionaries of 2008. In April 2020 he was voted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2025 he received the William James Fellow Award for lifetime achievement from the Association for Psychological Science.