Professor Keltner received his B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and he completed three years of post-doctoral work with Paul Ekman at the University of California, San Francisco.
On February 27, 2009, he was a guest presenter at the Science of a Meaningful Life seminar "Building Compassion, Creating Well-being", along with University of California, Berkeley and Greater Good Science Center Executive Director Dacher Keltner.