He earned his B.A. with highest honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984, and his PhD in Social Psychology in 1989 from Stanford University. He has been at the University of California, Berkeley since 1996 where he researches the effects of human emotion on social interaction and decision-making. Keltner has published extensively on emotions, and is currently the Associate Editor of Cognition and Emotion, and Consulting Editor for Personality and Social Pyschology Bulletin, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Emotion.