Greed, Games, and Goodness–This Friday!
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | Tags: Dacher Keltner, children, events, goodness, parenting | Leave a Comment »Time is running out to get your ticket to the first-ever Greater Good Science Center fundraiser, happening this Friday evening on the UC Berkeley campus. "Greed, Games, and Goodness" will feature a conversation between the GGSC's Dacher Keltner and best-selling author ...
Good News for NPR
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Tags: Generosity, Giving, altruism, goodness, money | 1 Comment »Ever wonder about those people who donate to NPR pledge drives year after year, even though everyone else still enjoys the same listening benefits they do? And if you are one of those people, ever wonder if you’re alone? A new ...
What happens when compassion hurts?
Friday, May 8th, 2009 | Tags: Uncategorized, compassion, empathy, goodness, helping behavior, human nature, mindfulness, violence | 3 Comments »This is the edited transcript of a May 7 talk I gave to the nurses of UC Berkeley Health Services on surviving compassion fatigue. I’m going to warn you: This is a somewhat difficult talk, full of paradoxes. I’m going ...
The Tipping Point of Happiness: A Review of Positivity
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 | Tags: Jen ratio, goodness, gratitude, happiness, health, optimism, prosocial behavior, psychology, self-actualization, social capital, social connections | Leave a Comment »There has been no shortage of books recently about the benefits of positive emotions like happiness and optimism. But Barbara L. Fredrickson, author of Positivity (Crown Publishers, 2009), may be the first to suggest that a mathematical ratio of positive ...
How Good Are You?
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | Tags: Prejudice, altruism, compassion, empathy, goodness, morality, prosocial behavior, psychology, social intelligence | Leave a Comment »The folks at the Utne Reader asked me to contribute to their "Alt Wire," billed as "a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday." So today, I wrote this post, listing ...
Darwin’s Touch: Survival of the Kindest
Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | Tags: Dacher Keltner, altruism, compassion, cooperation, evolution, genetics, goodness, prosocial behavior, psychology | 2 Comments »Two hundred years ago today, Adam Gopnik writes in Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life, two pebbles -- Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln -- were dropped into the sea of life. Their ideas and ...
Paul Ekman-Dalai Lama book event
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 | Tags: compassion, emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, empathy, events, goodness, happiness, human nature, morality, neuroscience, prosocial behavior, psychology, religion | Leave a Comment »On October 22, Greater Good magazine and the Greater Good Science Center will be hosting a special event with world-renowned psychologist Paul Ekman. Ekman, a Greater Good editorial board member, recently published Emotional Awareness, an extended conversation between himself and ...
With Age, World Becomes “Mostly Good”
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 | Tags: goodness, happiness | Leave a Comment »A positive outlook on life isn’t generally associated with old age—on the contrary, the stereotypical “grumpy old man” may come to mind. But a new study suggests that as we get older, we increasingly think of the world as generally ...
What makes us want to be good?
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 | Tags: altruism, goodness, happiness, helping behavior, human nature, prosocial behavior, social connections | Leave a Comment »Readers who saw this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine might have been forgiven for thinking they were cracking open the latest issue of Greater Good. The cover story--"The Moral Instinct." by Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker--explores the evolutionary and neurobiological ...
Human Nature Redux, Redux
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 | Tags: altruism, compassion, genetics, goodness, human nature, neuroscience | Leave a Comment »Following up on Jeremy Smith's post (below) about David Brooks's recent column in The New York Times, he and I, along with Greater Good co-editor Dacher Keltner, sent this letter to the Times:To the Editor:In his Feb. 18 column, “Human ...
