Theory of power

Together with Deborah H. Gruenfeld of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Cameron Anderson,^[13] psychologist at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Keltner has developed the Approach/Inhibition Theory of Power, which aims to present an integrative account of the effects of power on human behavior, suggesting that the acquisition of power has a disinhibiting effect regarding the social consequences of exercising it.^[14][15][16]

Social Class

With collaborators Paul Piff and Michael Kraus, Keltner has offered a theoretical account of how social class shapes human thought, feeling, and action.^[17] In empirical demonstrations of this work, Keltner has shown that people from more privileged class backgrounds are more likely to drive through pedestrian crosswalks and cheat on tests to win a prize, feel less compassion than those who suffer, and explain their success in terms of their own superior traits.^[18]

Human Emotion

Keltner has been a central voice in making the case that emotions serve important social functions, enabling us to fold into relationships vital to survival, like friendships, groups, romantic partnerships, and parent-child attachments.^[19]  Guided by this framework, Keltner has done pioneering work on emotions like embarrassment, shame, love, compassion, amusement, and gratitude.^[20]

Beginning with his post-doctoral fellowship with Paul Ekman, Keltner has long studied emotional expression from a Basic Emotion perspective.^[21] He has done work documenting the universality of upwards of 20 distinct facial expressions, the richness with which people can communicate emotion in the voice, and how people communicate emotions like love, compassion, and gratitude through touch. In partnership with Alan Cowen, he has offered a new computational perspective on what emotions are.^[22]  With a “data-driven” approach that maps people’s emotional experiences and expressions across the widest array of emotions studied to date and across different cultures, this work is finding:  that the emotion space involves upwards of 20 distinct states, that blends in emotion are common, that each emotion category has many variations within it, and that discrete emotion concepts (e.g., “awe” “sympathy”) rather than broader constructs such as valence or arousal drive the representation of emotional experience and recognition of emotion.^[23]

Awe

In 2003, Keltner and collaborator Jonathan Haidt authored a paper charting what awe is and how it influences our moral, spiritual and aesthetic lives.^[24]  Building upon that paper, Keltner has done over 15 years of science on awe, summarized in AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and how it Can Transform Your Life.  This research shows that people find experiences of awe in what he calls the eight wonders of life: the moral beauty of others, nature, moving in unison, music, visual art, spirituality, big ideas, and life and death.  Awe enables individuals to integrate into strong communities by inspiring cooperative tendencies and a more collective self. In a recent paper with collaborator Maria Monroy, Keltner has made the case that experiences of awe account for why things like music, spirituality, and psychedelics benefit health and well-being.^[25]

Science of happiness

In his book Born to be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Keltner explores the science behind well-being. The book attempts to counter the bias that we are wired to be self-interested. Keltner explores the Confucian idea of the jen ratio; the relationship between actions that bring the good of others to completion and those that bring out bad. The greater score is a direct relation to your happiness. In the book he touches on the qualities of gratitude, compassion, play, awe, embarrassment and teasing and how these qualities are innate in people but also can be developed.^[26]