Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner
- Guest
- Dr. Dacher Keltner
- Read time
- ~5 min
- Uploaded
- 6 Apr 2026
- Duration
- 2:20:19
- Views
- 101.1K
KEYPOINTS
- 01
Emotion science grew from six facial expressions to about 20
Paul Ekman's New Guinea work established six static expressions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, surprise and a smile. Their universality has been contested by Jim Russell, Lisa Feldman Barrett and others. Keltner's lab and others, including Jessica Tracy and Disa Sauter, have since documented roughly 20 distinct expressions, including awe, love, compassion, embarrassment, shame and pain. Ekman himself told the young Keltner to study awe.
- 02
About half of emotional expression appears to be hardwired
Keltner's former student Alan Cowen worked with Google engineers to have AI code facial expressions in millions of videos from 144 cultures, which once took an hour of manual coding per minute of video. They found about 75% overlap across cultures in how 16 expressions show up in situations like fireworks, a test or laughing with friends. Keltner's estimate is that 50 to 60% of emotional expression is hardwired, with the rest varying in interesting ways.
- 03
Awe can be measured
Despite its reputation as ineffable, awe has a recognizable vocal burst ("whoa"), facial expression, goosebumps, higher vagal tone and deactivation of certain brain regions. Keltner's lab studied it in the field: beside a T. rex replica in Berkeley's paleontology museum, under giant eucalyptus trees, among veterans whitewater rafting with Stacy Bare, and at the first view of Yosemite. There, Yang Bai asked hundreds of travelers how they felt and heard "small and quiet, but part of something really large."
- 04
Going from small to vast is the core of awe
Huberman notes that a widening visual aperture, as when you come out of a tunnel into a valley, shifts the nervous system toward parasympathetic calm. Keltner says Pixar's Pete Docter uses the same move in films: narrow, tense framing that suddenly opens onto vastness. It also works metaphorically, as when a cellist's five hours of narrow daily practice becomes part of history on stage.
- 05
Visual aperture changes time perception
Huberman explains that narrow focus, as when waiting in line or watching a typing indicator, makes the brain take more snapshots, so time drags. That's also why a car crash can feel like slow motion. Panoramic views mean fewer snapshots and a more relaxed state. Awe also links us through time: Keltner describes the smell of eucalyptus on his first day at UC Santa Barbara instantly connecting him to his childhood near UCLA.
- 06
Collective awe synchronizes bodies and brains
Research on brain synchronization shows heart rates and brain activity aligning at concerts and games, and infants syncing to their culture's music. Keltner calls this a materialistic account of Émile Durkheim's "collective effervescence." Music can unite a crowd within milliseconds in a way a classroom rarely manages. He and Jonathan Haidt argued early on that awe helps a highly cooperative species fold into groups.
- 07
Self-focus is awe's great enemy
Keltner quotes Emerson: in awe, "all mean egotism vanishes." Citing Jean Twenge's longitudinal data, he says we've grown more self-focused, with a large share of photos now of ourselves, and that worrying about status or money suppresses awe. Both men describe stories that cocaine, "the me drug," ended the communal feel of the Grateful Dead and Laurel Canyon scenes.
- 08
Embarrassment signals commitment to the group
Keltner first noticed embarrassment after startling people in Ekman's lab: blushing, averted gaze, hiding the face. When people show embarrassment we like and trust them more. Huberman relays a point from Dr. K: a man who doesn't get embarrassed after a clumsy pickup line comes across as creepy. Patients with orbitofrontal damage, studied with Bob Knight, don't show embarrassment when they should.
EXAMPLES
- 01
The awe walk study with older adults
With Virginia Sturm at UCSF, adults aged 75 and older took a weekly half-hour awe walk for 8 weeks. They went somewhere new, slowed down, timed their breathing to their steps, and shifted from small to vast: a leaf to the whole tree, one child's laugh to a playground's chorus. They felt more awe and kindness, the photos they took showed more of their surroundings, and they reported less physical pain. Keltner says six years later they're seeing signs of better brain health.
- 02
Awe and health
Keltner cites findings that awe reduces inflammation and raises vagal tone, and that about a minute of awe a day reduced long COVID symptoms. He says doctors are starting to think about prescribing nature and music for this reason.
- 03
Fraternity nicknames
In an early study, groups of four fraternity brothers at the University of Wisconsin made up nicknames from each other's initials and teased one another, often profanely. Teasing tended to accuse someone of breaking a group norm, like passing out drunk in the street. The more embarrassment was shown, the more they liked each other, and playful teasers who reinforced norms without humiliating were most popular. Keltner separates this from bullying, which excludes or humiliates.
- 04
Stories of awe from 26 countries
Collecting about 2,600 accounts of awe worldwide, Keltner found sports everywhere, from Brazilian football to Red Sox stories, but no one named Facebook or Instagram. He cites a sociology paper comparing Pittsburgh Steelers fandom to religion, with rituals, towels and "Steeler Nation" bars, and describes Steve Kerr looking up at 10,000 dancing fans.
- 05
Joe Strummer's campfires
Huberman describes the Clash frontman hosting late-night campfires open to anyone, with music and talk until 2 or 3 am. Keltner notes campfires go back several hundred thousand years, and that small-scale societies tell stories of connection around them. Huberman adds that a fire provides long-wavelength light at night.
OTHER RELEVANT
- 01
Take a weekly awe walk
Pick a route with some surprise or childlike wonder, slow your pace, deepen and sync your breathing, and keep shifting attention from details to wholes: points of light to patterns of light, single clouds to whole skies. About 30 minutes is enough.
- 02
Design awe into shared spaces
To counter loneliness and alienation, Keltner suggests rewilding parts of cities, adding public art and music, creating face-to-face encounters and collective rituals like a town-square yoga class, and showcasing moral beauty: other people's courage and kindness. His climbing gym, with monthly local art, music and saunas, is his model.
- 03
Psychedelics: promise and caution
Keltner links the classic psychedelics, as distinct from MDMA (an empathogen) and ketamine (a dissociative), to awe: a vanishing self and connection to vast things. He cites Molly Crockett's finding of greater kindness a year after festival use, and promising data for death anxiety, addiction, PTSD, OCD and panic. He worries about casual microdosing "like coffee" without guidance, urges honoring Indigenous traditions, and both men caution people with psychosis or bipolar disorder in the family.