Meet Inside Out’s Emotion Coach

Most of us would prefer to ignore or deny negative emotions like fear, anger, sadness, and disgust. But Pixar’s new hit film Inside Out asks viewers to get up close and personal with uncomfortable emotions. That, says the film’s science advisor Dacher Keltner, could be a good thing. Inside Out takes place almost entirely inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley, a happy-go-lucky kid whose life is thrown into an emotional tailspin by her family’s move. Keltner, a professor of psychology and an emotion researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, talks with Ira about the value of sadness, and how he helped Inside Out’s filmmakers navigate a child’s mind.