A conversation on awe with Dacher Keltner, PhD

Photo by Natalie Keltner-McNeil

Happy new year! What a joy it’s been to share perspectives on nature relatedness + magic mushrooms, spirituality + self-transcendence, psychedelics + end of life transitions. As we kick off a new year at MAPP Magazine, it’s a bittersweet time of ends and new beginnings. With this issue, as Dr. Kimberly Dickman (C’22) steps down from her role as editor (thank you, Kimberly), we’re delighted to welcome January contributor, Josey Murray (C’23), who alongside Abi Tschetter (C’22) will continue on as MAPP Magazine’s newest editor. In honor of an inspiring year of collaboration—with one another and many alumni authors making a difference in the world—we could think of no better expert to speak on the common thread that knit this issue together: awe.

Dacher Keltner, PhD., is a researcher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches and runs the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory. He has studied intrapersonal characteristics and functions of emotion and now focuses on how positive emotions, such as awe, compassion, desire, and pride shape an individual’s relationships, physical environment, and sources of pleasure. In this interview with Dr. Keltner, we spoke about the science of awe and about his latest book, Awe: The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life.

MAPP Magazine (MM): Please share a bit about your background and how you came to the topic of awe and the general topic of well-being.

Dacher Keltner (DK): Like all humans, I'm interested in what makes us happy. I got to focus on it scientifically and in teaching. I study human emotion. I study the face and the voice and physiology. Early on, I devoted my career to emotions like fear, anger, shame, and embarrassment. I did this paper—I think it was published in 2001—showing that women's smiles in their yearbook photo predict how happy they are 30 years later. I was like, wow, there is something to not only the smile, but positive emotion. It opened my mind. If positive emotions matter as the well-being literature and those like Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ed Diener and others were showing, what are they? How do we use the tools of emotion science to understand this bedrock of well-being?

We know that part of the reason we need positive psychology is scientific. We've studied anger, but we haven't studied compassion. We've studied fear, but not gratitude. We've studied hatred, but not love; terror, but not awe. We've got the tools to do so, so let's go. That inspired this large chapter in my career of trying to understand what the positive emotions are from an emotion-science perspective and then getting the well-being.

The other thing was teaching. I teach at a big public university. I was looking at the students—they're all stressed out, and so I offered a happiness class about 20 years ago. There was a hunger for this. And it grew into this wonderful teaching commitment. I just taught my last class of this year's edition of “Happiness” to 660 people. It's so gratifying to teach what we're learning about well-being in actionable ways to young people. Teaching was part of this too.

MM: Thank you so much for that and thank you for your work in this field. I’ve had the pleasure of reading your newest book on awe. I really enjoyed it. In the book, you shared how you came to write it at this time. Would you share a bit of that here?

DD: Part of it was academic and part of it was personal or autobiographical. I was raised by my parents. My childhood was awesome. I was raised by a literature professor and a visual artist in the late 60s near Laurel Canyon, and it was just wild—for better and for worse. Part of this book came from losing my brother. My younger brother, Rolf, was one year younger than me. He was my companion in awe, and we just went rafting and hiking in the mountains. We played sports together and did teenage things together. We danced together, and we were in search of awe and meaning as young people. And then in the middle of life, he got colon cancer. And after two horrific years—it's a brutal disease—he passed away. I was there with our family and it caught me totally off guard. The end of life so often is mysterious. It's terrifying, and it's horrifying, but it's also mysterious. I had this deep sense of him and his soul, and I felt like there was something he was going toward. He was in this kind of peaceful state, and I was awestruck. What is life about? Like a lot of people feel when they lose people really close to them, I really fell into a very hard state. Really disoriented and anxious and panicky and lacking meaning. I was doing all this science on awe, which is so good for you. So I thought, man, ‘veI got to go find myself and I’ve got to rediscover awe. How can I feel it now that Rolf's gone? That's what really animated the writing of the book.

MM: Thank you for sharing that. For our readers who don't know, what is awe? Why does it matter? And how is it linked to well-being?

DK: Oh, it's profound. Awe is an emotion you feel when you encounter vastness and mysteries that are beyond your understanding of the world. We feel it in what I call the eight wonders of life. We feel it in nature and in collective movement with other people or effervescence, and encountering the moral beauty of other people. How kind and courageous people are all the time. We can feel it in music and visual design and spirituality and life and death and in big ideas, like AI or dark matter or space. So there are these eight realms that we find this feeling. It unfolds. In the book, I write not only about the science, but also spiritual writing and environmentalist writing. When it unfolds in this pattern,your sense of self diminishes, and you feel like you're part of something larger than yourself. I am part of this community, and then it enables what William James called our saintly tendencies. Like: I want to be good. I want to share, I want to be kind.

Five minutes of awe is so good for you. It elevates well-being. It reduces stress. It reduces the body's inflammation response, which is really problematic healthwise. It elevates vagal tone. It makes you feel less lonely, it reduces depression, it reduces anxiety. It makes you a better steward of the environment. It gives you a broader sense of time. It feels like I have more time, that’s hard to beat. Like when I think about talking to you two and the fact that we use language and make eye contact and have these ideas, I can get choked up. It's just all around us and it's so good for us. I was talking to Angela Duckworth and she said maybe grit, gratitude, awe, and kindness are the pillars of well-being. I think awe has a shot to become one of the core pathways to well-being.

MM: I'm feeling that one. I have experienced what you're talking about. Even now in the wonder of this moment—where three people who are in totally different parts of the world are connecting and talking and have this common experience. It’s incredible. It’s so beautiful.

DK: And I love your phrase, the wonder of this moment. It's true.

MM: In the January issue of MAPP Magazine, we have authors writing about self-transcendent experiences, psychedelics, and spirituality and practice. How does awe connect with these topics?

DK: Maria Monroy and I published an article in 2022 in Psychological Science, with a review chart of the health benefits of all those to well-being. But your question is in some sense deeper. There’s all this stuff in the well-being space. In medicine, there are new pathways to health, lifestyle approaches to health, and it begins with mysteries like awe. When I go camping, I just come back feeling better. Or isn't it amazing, when I listen to music, I feel better. Or, I go to a museum and I see visual art or I dance with people or I take psychedelics, and I feel better. It is well known but why? The magic ingredient is self-transcendent states, which include bliss and ecstasy. Sometimes, horror. It’s like, “Oh my God!” From gratitude in some sense and the love of humanity.

There's an increasing consensus—from David Yaden’s lab, our lab, and others—that psychedelics activate our sense of being part of something vast and awesome. I think that will turn out to be one of the pathways through which psychedelics do good work.

Ming Quo has a nice review that shows getting out in nature is so good for you. One of the reasons is awe and spirituality. William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke to that. There's some feeling we get, a spiritual feeling, when we're meditating or praying or doing yoga, where it really becomes transcendent and there's awe. There is this awesome feeling, a sense of being merging with the divine, whatever it registers for you. As scientists, like in MAPP, we cultivate the science to have this measurable thing where we can start to understand these phenomena. It's not measuring the soul or non-duality. It's measuring what William James was interested in: my religious feeling, my transcendent feeling, and awe. I taught the new science of awe and the use of music in well-being. This woman talked about the Taylor Swift concert and shared that she was crying and had goosebumps and was hugging people and felt like her whole life made sense.

MM: Yes, even Taylor Swift.

DK: At the top!

MM: One of the surprising facts I took from your book and which I appreciated is the experience of awe that we notice in moral beauty—of human performance and excellence— and even beyond that, of kindness, cognitive advancements, etcetera can bring about awe even more than nature. Were there other outcomes regarding awe that surprised you or that you would highlight?

DK: Yeah, moral beauty was one and the wonder of social connection. Just pausing for a moment and looking into people's eyes is incredible. The other one that just shook me—we found this in many cultures—was the everyday nature of it. When we started the work, like a lot of people, we began with stereotypes of awe. It's the Grand Canyon. It's hugging Nelson Mandela when he was alive. But it turns out, you know, once you really have people reflect on their experience, averaging about two to three times a week, they're getting this boost, this shot of awe in seeing kindness in the streets, seeing the leaves change in the trees around you, looking at a sunset, really pausing for a moment and listening, listening intentionally to music. There are so many sources of awe. That made me feel very bold, bullish about writing the book. It’s not hopping on a plane and spending a lot of money to go to the Australian Barrier Reef. Just open your eyes and look at the trees around you or look at the architectural design of the sky or other people. That really was surprising to me, and it changed how I think about the emotion and the mind; it's a basic state to access.

MM: You talk about the idea that these are everyday moments. So, how do we cultivate this everyday wonder and more awe in our lives?

DK: I'll give you a two-pronged answer that we've actually tested scientifically. This word has so many connotations that are wrong. Oh, it's rare. It's at one moment, I'm in the Himalayas. It's full of terror. No, it's the wonders of this moment, to use your phrase, Abi. And, I think you have to do a couple of things. I learned this viscerally in grief. My brother was gone and all I could really do was work and be kind to my family. I knew I had to cultivate awe.

So, put away the categorizations and the labels and the checklists that the mind is filled with and open up your mind. What's the bigger thing here? The bigger thing for us right now is talking to you two, this conversation we're sharing with symbolic language and the tradition of positive psychology. Pause. Put away the labels, open the mind, and start to sense what the vaster thing is that you're part of in the moment. Maybe it's you're part of pedestrians going to lunch in New York City, and you're a big movement of humanity. Maybe it's your part of an ecosystem, or maybe it's being part of a group of sports fans and you're cheering. Maybe it’s the Warriors and all the great traditions of the Warriors. Maybe you're meditating, and you're part of an ethical spiritual tradition. We're always part of something larger. Pause. Breathe. Shut down the default mind and open up to the bigger.

All I did was the eight wonders all the time. I'm walking to work. Just look for wonder. Stop for a moment and look at the leaves and the trees. Follow what is mysterious to you. Listen to music differently. Pick a piece of music that you feel speaks to your identity. Just quiet down and listen to it—see where it takes you. Contemplate moral beauty. Think about someone who inspires you, brings you to tears. Just think about that person. Tell stories about that person. When you're out in nature. Just think about what's the system that you're part of? I'm looking at clouds coming in off the Pacific Ocean at Berkeley and thinking about the big weather systems. It's right there to cultivate. The book hints at those suggestions. We've tested them scientifically. I'm excited about the positive psychology of all this and all the interventions that are expanding pretty dramatically.

MM: Thank you, Dacher. We’ll switch to a slightly different topic if you don’t mind. Can you share a bit about the center you founded, Greater Good Science Center?

DK: A couple of Cal alumni had just lost their daughter to cancer and were reeling in grief. They wanted to make as many people as possible more peaceful and happier. It was 2001, and there was a lot of interest in well-being and happiness. So, we decided to start a center. Our approach is journalistic—we even had print magazines before the website. There was a lot of great science, and we devoted a lot of resources to writing about it. It has grown. Our central audience is teachers. We have an education program that offers courses. We have a new course on awe for educators. We do a lot of work with doctors and nurses. We have workplace courses, and we have a podcast (The Science of Happiness) that's done really well, with about 150,000 listeners. Now, we are very interested in bridging the polarization divides in our society. We are exploring what tools of positive psychology can help with that in young people. It's been, in some sense, the most uplifting thing I've done in my career, though it hasn't produced a single publication for me. It's totally outside of the usual kind of metrics of the University. It's been remarkable. I was giving a book talk in Colorado, and this young woman came up to me. She was crying, and she said, “I got so depressed during the pandemic, and your podcast kept me here.” That's what we do. It's been really an interesting journey.

MM: So good. On that note, what are you researching and teaching and sharing that just gets you out of bed in the morning? What are you loving in your work right now?

DK: Well, I'm excited about moral beauty. Thanks for picking up on that, Kimberly. We forget that other people are so important to our well-being and our sense of what's good—like the fact that we're moved aesthetically by other people’s kindness and courage. So, I'll be doing a book on moral beauty and how that inspires our own good work. So that's one. And then, the other thing that I'm really excited about and doing research on this is—what did you call it Abi?—Moments of wonder. Because of the book, people have reached out who are part of institutions like Carnegie Hall and the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and the national parks. They highlight that public institutions are about awe. 360 million people go to national parks at $20/visit. I’m exploring how we build in those moments of wonder. Acknowledging the displaced people and continuing to work on that, how do we make people aware of the awe qualities of these shared institutions for the good? I think that will be a central part of the work I do in the next five years. And, you know, it's what we should be doing. It's interesting because early on in positive psychology, Marty Seligman was talking about states, traits, and institutions. I think we've done really well with states and traits. But institutions, we have not done as well with because those are hard to change, and psychologists don't usually study them. But, I think this is a chance to build awe into public institutions.

MM: Thank you, Dacher. Is there anything that we should have asked about but didn't?

DK: No. I’m reflecting on having just taught last night—saying goodbye to my undergrads for the semester and thinking about character strengths. One of those is transcendence. Awe is right at the heart of that. It's a good time for us to be thinking about transcendence and how to transcend some of these problems of our era. I am grateful for your questions.

MM: We are very grateful for this time. This has been an incredible way to start the day, so thank you. Last question, for people who aren't that familiar with you. How can our readers learn more about your work?

DK: You know, I think I have a Wiki page that somebody created. You can read the book and the other books: Born to be good and the Power of Paradox. The Greater Good Science Center has a ton online. I have online classes, and you can subscribe to the podcast. Past podcasts will give you a good feel of what I’m interested in—like how positive psychology can help with the harder problems in our society, like mass incarceration. You should listen to that to get to know what we're up to.

For more on the topic of awe, check out Awe: The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life, which was released in paperback earlier this month and is available wherever you buy books.

About the expert | Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the science of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, the co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct, and his latest book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it can Transform Your Life.