Gad Saad

Gad Saad studied at McGill University and Cornell University. The recorded working language is English, French and Arabic. The field of work recorded is behavioral sciences, marketing and consumer behavior. Residence is recorded at Montreal. Employment is recorded with Cornell University and Concordia University.

• Name — Gad Saad • Born — 13 October 1964 • Birthplace — Beirut, Lebanon • Fields — Marketing, consumer behaviour • Workplaces — Concordia University • Education — McGill University (BSc, MBA) Cornell University (MS, PhD) • Thesis Title — The adaptive use of stopping policies in sequential consumer choice • Thesis Url — https: newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/2707797 • Thesis Year — 1994 • Doctoral Advisor — Edward Russo • Website — gadsaad.com

Saad was born in 1964 in Beirut, Lebanon, to a family of both Lebanese Jewish and Syrian Jewish descent. His family fled in October 1975 to Montreal, Canada to escape the Lebanese Civil War. His elder brother, David, is a judoka who competed at the 1976 Summer Olympics. His nephew Ariel Helwani is a mixed martial arts journalist. Saad obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science, an MBA in marketing from McGill University, and a master's degree in management and a doctorate in marketing from Cornell. Saad is an atheist who describes himself as culturally Jewish.

Saad had been a professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal, since 1994. From 2008 until 2018, he held the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioural Sciences and Darwinian Consumption. He has held visiting professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, University of California, Irvine, and Northwood University. He was an associate editor for the journal Evolutionary Psychology from 2012 to 2015. He is an advisory fellow for the Centre for Inquiry Canada. Saad wrote a blog for Psychology Today titled Homo Consumericus from 2008 until 2020, and contributed to The Wall Street Journal in 2011. Saad hosts a YouTube show titled The Saad Truth. His channel has received more than 40 million views. In May 2026, he announced he was leaving Montreal to take a position at the Declaration of Independence Center at the University of Mississippi.

Saad has researched how hormones affect and are affected by consumer behavior, such as how conspicuous consumption affects testosterone levels, how testosterone levels affect risk-taking, and how hormones in the menstrual cycle affect buying decisions.

Saad has long publicly argued against political correctness and social justice activism, which he believes limits academia. In 2017, he provided testimony to the Canadian Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs arguing against Bill C-16 which added gender expression and gender identity as protected grounds to the Canadian Human Rights Act. More recently he has argued against what he calls "wokeism", especially with regards to transgender people. Saad coined the phrase suicidal empathy, which he defines as a form of empathy that has the potential to cause the destruction of the party exhibiting it. The concept has been criticized, by Valerie Stivers, senior editor at UnHerd, as "fake science" and somewhere between "off-putting and hateful". Matthew d'Ancona described Saad's rhetoric around the term as "spectacularly divisive". Saad has been critical of immigration from Muslims to what he describes as "Western countries".

In May 2026, Saad said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that he and his family were moving to Oxford, Mississippi due to Canada's tax system and immigration policies.