Daniel P. Keating
Psychology Professor, Human Development Scientist, Stress Expert


Dr. Daniel P. Keating is a dynamic public speaker for groups interested in all aspects of human development, including teachers’ associations, early childhood educators, youth development professionals, bankers, and corporate leaders.

 

Drawing on his own extensive research on human development from basic biology to how we organize our societies, as well as the writing for his new book, Dr. Daniel P. Keating focuses on the growing stress epidemic in our society and its negative effects on our everyday lives – in families, schools and workplaces.  He tells the story of what the latest research findings say about our over-stressed lives – its origins, its impact on how we live and work, and its consequences that threaten our health, well-being, and productivity every day.  Most important, he focuses on what we can do – individually and together – to break this runaway cycle of stress.

 

Dr. Daniel P. Keating is Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics, and Research Professor, Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Born Anxious: The Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity – and How to Break the Cycle.  His current NIH-funded research focuses on the teen brain, and the impact of brain development on risk-taking in health and behavior, as well as the juvenile justice system.  A faculty member at a number of internationally renowned institutions during his career, he also led the program in Human Development at the Canadian-based global research network, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

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Hardcover
Born AnxiousThe Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity - and How to Break the Cycle
St. Martin's Press

Why are we the way we are? Why do some of us find it impossible to calm a quick temper or to shake anxiety? The debate has always been divided between nature and nurture, but as psychology professor Daniel P. Keating demonstrates in Born Anxious, new DNA science points to a third factor that allows us to inherit both the nature and the nurture of previous generations—with significant consequences.
Hardcover
Cambridge University Press

For developmental scientists, the nature versus nurture debate has been settled for some time. Neither nature nor nurture alone provides the answer. It is nature and nurture in concert that shape developmental pathways and outcomes, from health to behavior to competence. This insight has moved far beyond the assertion that both nature and nurture matter, progressing into the fascinating terrain of how they interact over the course of development. In this volume, students, practitioners, policy analysts, and others with a serious interest in human development will learn what is transpiring in this new paradigm from the developmental scientists working at the cutting edge, from neural mechanisms to population studies, and from basic laboratory science to clinical and community interventions.
Hardcover
The Guilford Press

Probing the effects of the social environment upon human development, this volume asks how we can best support the health and well-being of infants and children in an era of rapid economic and technological change. The book presents cogent findings on human development as both an individual and a population phenomenon. Topics covered include links between socioeconomic status, achievement, and health; the impact of early experience upon brain and behavioral development; and how schools and communities can develop new kinds of learning environments to enhance adaptation and foster intellectual growth.
Stressed-Out Kids: What We Need to Do at Home, at School, and in Our Communities Every year, more children are showing signs of stress-dysregulation (SDR)- the inability to regulate our reactions to difficult situations - that leads to problems in behavior, in learning, and eventually in achievement and health. In this talk, Dr. Keating describes new research that has uncovered the hidden biology behind this alarming trend, and what it means for parents, for early childhood educators, for teachers – for anyone trying to support healthy development in children and youth. Most importantly, he presents effective methods for dealing with this new and challenging reality, and how our efforts can help to break this cycle of stress.
Stress Contagion in the Workplace: Countering the Threat to Productivity and Health Stress contagion – the physiological linkage among individuals working together on teams – in the workplace is a real phenomenon. Teams tend to become aligned with each other in their physiological responses. This “second hand stress” can be harmful to team productivity and restrict creativity in thinking if the contagion leads to everyone being stressed out. But research also shows that a moderate level of stress arising from a desire to succeed can also spread to the full team and enhance productivity. In this talk, Dr. Keating discusses the critical tools that managers can use to increase both individual employees’ health and team productivity.
The Stress Epidemic and Runaway Anxiety: Why Rage is All the Rage Hardly a day goes by without a new story on road rage, air rage, airport rage, retail rage, and on and on. Social media plays a role in documenting this, but there’s more to it. We’re experiencing a major stress epidemic. It shows up in increases in stress-related diseases and disorders, in surveys of how stressed we are all feeling, and in the physical markers of stress in our bodies. There is a core of anxiety that drives this – anxiety about income security, about rapid cultural changes, about threats to social status – that is also linked to hidden biological processes that we are learning from pioneering research. A key worry that drives this more in the U.S. than in other wealthy countries is the steep social inequality that raises the stakes for success and failure. In this talk, Dr. Keating discusses how breaking this cycle of stress, and stressed-out confrontations, is possible, and the tools we can use to do so.

Read Dr. Keating’s commentary on the problem of disconnected youth on Wallet Hub.

Listen to an interview with Dr. Keating on the New Books Network.

Dr. Keating’s article on workplace stress contagion, and how to deal with it, in Business Insider.

Read an excerpt from Born Anxious on managing stress at NBC.

Read an excerpt from Born Anxious on “why some people are born to worry” at Scientific American.

Discover Dr. Keating’s research as featured in Lifehacker.

Read an excerpt from Born Anxious on “the strugglers and the thrivers” at Quiet Revolution.

Read Dr. Keating’s article on stress for CNN.

Read Dr. Keating’s article on the transformative role of epigenetics in Child Development.

Find six major tips to reduce stress and anxiety in Dr. Keating’s article for Time.

Read Dr. Keating’s account in Salon of how neurodevelopment and stress create vulnerability to violent extremism in youth.

Listen to Dr. Keating’s interview about Born Anxious on the Middle Way podcast from the UK

"[Dr. Keating was] the ideal clean-up hitter, the man every team wants at bat when the stakes are high, and the 2015 YMCA Leadership Symposium on Youth Development from Cradle to Career concluded on a very high note, thanks in no small measure to [his] outstanding contributions...His research is important and eye-opening; the way he presents it makes it come alive and moves people to consider the possibilities."
-- Larry M. Rosen, Dean, YMCA Leadership Symposium

"Dr. Keating's talk last week was terrific. He hit exactly the right note for us. We aspire to learn the latest science and consider how these recent developments can be applied to the current legal discussions; he set us up perfectly. The early reactions from the students reflect similar enthusiasm."
-- Don Duquette, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of Child Advocacy Law Clinic, University of Michigan Law School
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