Michael I. Norton

Associate Professor of Business Administration, Marvin Bower Fellow

Michael I. Norton is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit and Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School.

He is the co-author - with Elizabeth Dunn - of the new book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (Simon & Schuster).

Michael I. Norton is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit and Marvin Bower Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and English from Williams College and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University. Prior to joining HBS, Professor Norton was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

He is the co-author - with Elizabeth Dunn - of the new book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (Simon & Schuster).

His work has been published in a number of leading academic journals, including Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Consumer Research, and has been covered in media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He has appeared on National Public Radio, and written op-eds for the New York Times, Forbes, and the Los Angeles Times.

His research has twice been featured in the New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas issue, in 2007 (Ambiguity Promotes Liking) and 2009 (The Counterfeit Self). His "The IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love" was featured in Harvard Business Review's Breakthrough Ideas for 2009. In 2010, he won the Theoretical Innovation Prize from the Society of Personality and Social Psychology; in 2011, he won the SAGE Young Scholars Award from the Foundation for Social and Personality Psychology; in 2012, he was selected for Wired Magazine’s Smart List as one of “50 People Who Will Change the World.”

At HBS, he teaches a second-year MBA course, The Art of Marketing Science, and in the Program for Leadership Development and Strategic Marketing Management executive programs.

 
  1. Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending

    For more information on Professor Norton’s new book, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending (Simon & Schuster, 2013), co-authored with Elizabeth Dunn, click here.
  2. Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

    At TEDxCambridge, Michael Norton shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness -- when you don't spend it on yourself. Listen for surprising data on the many ways pro-social spending can benefit you, your work, and (of course) other people.

  3. A Shrewd Slogan

  4. The 'Last Place Aversion' Paradox

  5. 'Last-Place Aversion'

  6. Is Anti-White Bias a Problem?

  7. Rising Wealth Inequality: Should We Care?

  8. Spreading the Wealth

  9. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness

  10. The Counterfeit Self

  11. The IKEA Effect

  12. Why Lie When You Can Evade?