Dacher was born in Mexico, and raised in Laurel Canyon and the foothills of the Sierra Mountains by a literature professor (Mother) and artist (Father). He received his BA in 1984 from UC Santa Barbara and his PhD from Stanford University in 1989. Dacher's research focuses on the evolutionary bases of compassion, awe, embarrassment, gratitude and love, the emotional bases of moral intuition, and the abuses of power and the formation of social hierarchies, and he is widely known as one of the leading scholars in the study of facial expression. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers, two best-selling textbooks (Social Psychology, with Tom Gilovich and Richard Nisbett; and Understanding Emotions, 2nd Edition, with Keith Oatley and Jennifer Jenkins). He has also written for the Utne Reader and the New York Times Magazine.

Dacher has received numerous national research and teaching awards. Most recently, WIRED magazine recently rated the podcasts of his course Human Emotion as one of the five best in the country, and the Utne reader just named Dacher one of its 50 visionaries for 2008. Dacher lectures widely on happiness, emotion, and power to thousands of health care providers and executives each year around the country, and has participated on two scientific panels with the Dalai Lama. Dacher Keltner is currently a Professor of Psychology at U.C. Berkeley and founding faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and co-editor of the magazine Greater Good, an interdisciplinary center that is translating the new science of happiness and compassion to thousands of educators, parents, and interested readers. Dacher lives in the Berkeley hills with his wife Mollie McNeil, an artist, and his two daughters Natalie and Serafina.