Gad Saad (; born 13 October 1964) is a Lebanese-born Canadian marketing professor, formerly at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University in Montreal, PQ. He has argued for applying evolutionary psychology to marketing and consumer behaviour. He wrote a blog for Psychology Today and hosts a podcast titled The Saad Truth.
Early life and education 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.
Career 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 also held visiting professorships at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, University of California, Irvine, Northwood University (currently). 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.
Research 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.
Views 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 Muslim immigration in Western countries, stating in an interview with Israel Hayom, that "When you place Islam in Western conditions, they cannot coexist peacefully over time. True, one can find periods in history when Muslims and non-Muslims lived together, but it was never stable over time." and that "If trends in immigration and Islamic influence continue, Europe will descend into massive violence. And not just Europe, but any place where these processes are occurring." Saad's view on immgration conflicts with a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that immigrants to the United States commit fewer crimes than US-born Americans, and another by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research which concludes that first-generation Americans are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than US-born Americans. A study published in The International Journal of Law, Crime, and Justice concluded that "immigration does not structurally increase crime at the macro-European level, even under crisis conditions." Another study published in the British Journal of Political Science provided population-level estimates in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States of prejudicial stererotyping of Muslims as an "illiberal bogeyman"
Leaving Canada 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. He also said "my inner spirit is American." In June 2026, Saad said he was "numb" and "speechless" to learn what he described as an "exit tax" would cost him, saying that "no human being in a free society should have their hard-earned money stolen in this manner." In Canada, this is known as the departure tax, which categorizes non-registered assets if one ceases to reside in Canada as deemed dispositions, and therefore subject to a capital gain tax. Some assets can be exempt, including those in a registered retirement savings plan or a tax-free savings account. On June 18, 2026 Saad posted on X that he would have to pay a departure tax "for exercising his right to leave" Canada, and that his money would be "given to new incoming immigrants who hate Jews". A version of a tax charged on someone who ceases to be a resident is found in a number of countries, including Israel, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, and Spain. The United States charges an expatriaton tax on individuals who renounce citizenship and on long-term residents who end their residency for federal tax purposes.
Bibliography
Books Saad, G. (2007). The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. ISBN 9780805851502. Book review Saad, G. (ed.) (2011). Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences. Springer: Heidelberg, Germany. ISBN 9783540927839. Book review Saad, G. (2011). The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal About Human Nature. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781616144296. Book review Saad, G. (2020). The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. ISBN 9781621579595. Saad, G. (2023). The Saad Truth About Happiness: 8 Secrets for Leading the Good Life. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. ISBN 9781684515288. Saad, G. (2026). Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind. New York, NY: Broadside Books. ISBN 9780063446533.
Notes
References
External links
Official website Gad Saad's channel on YouTube