Dacher Keltner, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Faculty Director of the Greater Good Science Center, and bestselling author
The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence
It is taken for granted that power corrupts. This is reinforced culturally by everything from Machiavelli to contemporary politics. But what really is power and how do we get it? Once we have power, how does it change our behavior? In his new book, The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, celebrated psychologist Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. offers a revolutionary and timely reconsideration of everything we think we know about power.
As The Power Paradox makes clear, power dynamics touch every aspect of our lives and it is compassion and selflessness, not force, that enable us to have the most influence over others. Above all, power is given to us by other people. This is what all-too-often we forget, and what Dr. Keltner sets straight. This is the crux of the power paradox: by fundamentally misunderstanding the behaviors that helped us to gain power in the first place we set ourselves up to fall from power. We can’t retain power because we’ve never understood it correctly. Power isn’t the capacity to act in cruel and uncaring ways; it is the ability to do good for others, expressed in daily life.
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Upcoming Events
Poverty, by America (Event 1 of 2)
Matthew Desmond, Ph.D.
Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
Reuben Jonathan Miller, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
Poverty, by America (Event 2 of 2)
Matthew Desmond, Ph.D.
Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
Alex Kotlowitz
Bestselling author, journalist, and professor at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University
Evanston Township High School Auditorium
NO REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Note: Event start time is Central Time (CT).
Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society
Arline T. Geronimus, Sc.D.
Professor in the School of Public Health and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan
Doriane C. Miller, MD
Professor of Medicine and the inaugural director of the Center for Community Health and Vitality and the director of Health Equity Integration for the Institute of Translational Medicine at the University of Chicago
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