Michael Irwin Norton (born April 17, 1975) is the

Harold M. Brierley Harold Brierley is an American business and marketing executive focused on loyalty programs. Background Born in 1943, Brierley earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Harvard Business School with a ...

Professor of Business Administration at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

. He is also known for identifying and naming the IKEA effect.

Education

Norton received his B.A. from

Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kille ...

in 1997 and his Ph.D. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 2002.

Career

Norton worked at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

as a postdoctoral fellow from 2002 to 2005 in both the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, a ...

and

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

. He joined the Harvard Business School in 2005 as an assistant professor, and became an associate professor there in 2010. In 2014, he was appointed Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration there.

Research

Norton is known for studying the effect of social factors on people's views and behavior, as well as the psychology of investment and individuals' valuing of goods. He has also studied the psychology underlying individuals' spending decisions, and he has said that spending on experiences tends to make people happier than does spending on objects. His research on this subject has also shown that people become happier when they spend money on others than when they spend it on themselves. He has also researched subjects such as public perceptions of

executive compensation Executive compensation is composed of both the financial compensation (executive pay) and other non-financial benefits received by an executive from their employing firm in return for their service. It is typically a mixture of fixed salary, variab ...

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...

, and (with Dan Ariely) economic inequality in the United States. In 2016, he co-authored a study showing that

air rage Air rage is aggressive or violent behavior on the part of passengers and crew of aircraft, especially during flight. Air rage generally covers both behavior of a passenger or crew member that is likely caused by physiological or psychological str ...

incidents were almost four times as common on planes with first-class cabins than on planes without them. The study was published in the ''

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Sc ...

'' the following year.

References

External links

Faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norton, Michael I. 1975 births Living people Harvard Business School faculty 21st-century American psychologists Behavioral economists Williams College alumni Princeton University alumni MIT Sloan School of Management faculty 21st-century American economists MIT Media Lab people