The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness

Where once science painted humans as self-seeking and warlike, today scientists of many disciplines are uncovering the deep roots of human goodness. At the forefront of this revolution in scientific understanding is the Greater Good Science Center, based at the University of California, Berkeley. The center fuses its cutting-edge research with inspiring stories of compassion in Greater Good magazine. The best of these writings are collected here, with contributors from Steven Pinker, Robert Sapolsky, Paul Ekman, Michael Pollan, and the Dalai Lama, among others, The Compassionate Instinct will make you think about not only what it means to be happy and fulfilled but also what it means to lead an ethical and compassionate life. Book jacket.

Dacher Keltner, the cofounder of the Greater Good Science Center and a Professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Born to Be Good. Jeremy Adam Smith is the editor of Shareable.net, a contributing editor of Greater Good magazine, and the author of The Daddy Shift.