Dacher Keltner, founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and professor of psychology at University of California, Berkeley, is set to deliver the morning lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater.
Keltner will kick off the Week Seven theme, “Wonder and Awe – A Week Celebrating Chautauqua’s Sesquicentennial” with a lecture about the biology and evolution of emotion, particularly emotions like wonder, awe, compassion and beauty.
Keltner is a professor of psychology at University of California, Berkeley, where he is one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists, and the author of a book on, appropriately, awe — Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
For Keltner, awe is “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” according to his 2016 article “Why Do We Feel Awe?,” in which he explores the evolutionary reasons behind the emotion.
In the article, Keltner explained that awe seems to serve two primary purposes in modern life. The first is that awe instills a sense of self in terms of the collective that is imperative to the success of communal living. Communal living, Keltner explained, “required a new balancing act between the gratification of self-interest and an orientation toward supporting the welfare of others.” As a result, experiences of awe help individuals to orient their actions toward the interests of others.
The second purpose of awe in modern life is one that Keltner describes as the “proximal kind.” He said that people, when in a state of awe, are continually driven by incessant questions of “why?” and the hope to answer them, which instills innovation.
“Awe drives people to paradigm-shifting discoveries and new technologies,” he wrote.
This understanding of positive and significant emotions can instill a better sense of self and outlook on life. Keltner’s lecture will delve further into “awe” as a concept and the significant role it can play in an individual’s life as an introduction to the Week Seven series of lectures.
In addition to his most recent book, Keltner is the author of The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life and The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness. Keltner also worked as the scientific adviser behind Pixar’s film “Inside Out,” and is the host of Greater Good Science Center’s podcast, “The Science of Happiness.”
His areas of research explore power structures, social class, morality and decision making, art and music and emotion, expression and awe. Keltner is specifically focused on understanding the social function of emotion and how emotions allow humans to respond adaptively to social situations, whether they are conflicts or opportunities, that define human living.
“Based on this approach to emotion,” Keltner wrote in his research description, “I have documented the appeasement functions of embarrassment, the commitment enhancing properties of love and desire, and how awe motivates attachment to leaders and principles that transcend the self.”
