Through clever studies, Michael Norton studies how we feel about what we buy and spend.

Why you should listen

Michael I. Norton is a professor of business administration in the marketing unit at the Harvard Business School. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and English from Williams and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton. Prior to joining HBS, Professor Norton was a Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. 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 Annual Review of Psychology, and has been covered in media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

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.

Michael Norton’s TED talk

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