Compassion, Gratitude, Awe: Self Transcendent Emotions for Well Being with Dacher Keltner

In this talk Professor Dacher Keltner, PhD, will present the latest science of self-transcendent emotions, including compassion, gratitude, and awe. He will discuss the place of self-transcendent emotions in biological and cultural evolution. Prof. Keltner will focus on how they shift the self from narrow concerns about rewards and desires, to prosocial tendencies, including toward the environment, and a sense of being part of something larger than the self. He will conclude with a consideration of secular practices to cultivate such transcendent states. Dacher Keltner, PhD, is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center (greatergood.berkeley.edu). Dacher’s research focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality. Dacher is the author of several hundred scientific articles, several books, including Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, and has written for popular outlets like the New York Times. Dacher has won many research, teaching, and service awards, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has consulted for Apple, Pinterest, Google, the Sierra Club, and was a scientific consultant for Pixar’s Inside Out and for the Center for Constitutional Rights in its work to outlaw solitary confinement.