Cordaro grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. He also earned an M.S. in organic chemistry from UC Berkeley. After graduating from UC Berkeley, Cordaro completed his postdoctoral work at Yale University in 2014. Since 2009, Cordaro has studied human emotions and human well-being across several cultures.
Career
In 2009, Cordaro directed the Universal Expression Project at the University of California, Berkeley. His team completed some of the largest international emotional expression studies and began to decode a universal language of human emotion. It extended the list of universal emotions and provided evidence for amusement, awe, contentment, desire, embarrassment, pain, relief, and sympathy in both facial and vocal expressions. The project has covered over 10 countries around the world, including Bhutan. In 2015, he became a faculty member at Yale University and the Director of Wellbeing at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where he lead the Contentment Lab and published some of the first original research on contentment. Cordaro co-founded Good Group with Justin Milano in 2015. In 2016, along with Emilio Diez Barroso, he co-founded the Contentment Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides wellbeing assessments, curricula, and practices for children and adults in schools internationally. The Contentment Foundation is based on "The Four Pillars of Wellbeing," with the pillars being mindfulness, community, self-curiosity, and contentment. The Contentment Foundation's main service is to bring positive psychology and wellness practices to schools and organizations. In January 2020, the foundation expanded its offerings to include a new “Family Platform” that allows families to practice wellbeing at home. Cordaro's research reveals that across many cultures and traditions, contentment is the most prized emotion above all others, including happiness. Cordaro's philosophy for cultivating contentment includes practicing mindfulness, compassion and unconditionally accepting all emotions.
Publications
Cordaro, D., Sun, R., Kamble, S., Hodder, N., Monroy, M., Cowen, A., Bai, Y., and Keltner, D.. The Recognition of 18 Facial-Bodily Expressions Across Nine Cultures. Emotion. In Press.
Keltner, D., Cordaro, D., MacNeil, G., Simon-Thomas, E., Piff, P., and Jones, M.. Darwin’s Emoticons: The Artistic Portrayal of 51 Emotions.
Keltner, D., & Cordaro, D. T.. . In J.-M. Fernández-Dols & J. A. Russell, Oxford series in social cognition and social neuroscience. The science of facial expression. New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.
Keltner, D., Tracy, J., Sauter, D., Cordaro, D., McNeil, G. '. In Barrett, L.F., Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J.M.. Handbook of Emotions. pp. 467–482. Guilford Press.
