Sonja Vogt

Principal Investigator

Sonja Vogt

Professor

Faculty of Business and Economics
University of Lausanne

Biography

Sonja is a professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Lausanne. She uses lab and field experiments to examine the social and psychological mechanisms practitioners can use to tackle societal and environmental challenges related to public health, education, climate change, and land degradation. Much of her research is in collaboration with UN agencies and local NGOs in Sudan, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, India, and Armenia.

Sonja is affiliated with Nuffield College and the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences at the University of Oxford, as well as the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern.

See Sonja’s new project on digital solutions for sustainable land management, Agripath , together with the CDE in Bern.

Talking to Machines

SNSF | Swiss National Science Foundation

2024–2028

CHF 1.2 million

Third grant

Funding body

2024–2027

amount

Second grant

Funding body

2024–2026

amount

First grant

Funding body

2023–2024

amount

2026

The (anti-)conformity strategy space: How flexible is social learning when group membership and incentive alignment vary?

von Flüe, L., Efferson, C., Vogt, S

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

2025

Activating cultural evolution for good when people differ from each other

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., von Flüe, L.

Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution

2025

The cover of randomness: validating implicit methods for the study of sensitive topics

Efferson, C., Vogt, S.

Evolutionary Human Sciences. 7: e6

2024

Isolating a culture of son preference among Armenian, Georgian and Azeri Parents in Soviet-era Russia

Schief, M., Vogt, S., Churilova, E., Efferson, C.

Evolutionary Human Sciences. 6: e19

2024

When norm change hurts

Efferson, C., Ehret, S., von Flüe, L., Vogt, S.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 379: 20230039

2023

Green preferences sustain green washing: challenges in the cultural transition to a sustainable future

von Flüe, L., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S.

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 379: 20220268

2023

Activating cultural change for good in heterogeneous populations

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., von Flüe, L.

Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution. 62: 827-841

2023

A market for integrity: the use of competition to reduce bribery in education

Soraperra, I., Köbis, N., Shalvi, S., Vogt, S., Efferson, C., Offerman, T.

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. 107: 102110

2022

Group identities can undermine social tipping after intervention

Ehret, S., Constantino, S., Weber, E., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S.

Nature Human Behaviour. 6: 1669-1679

2022

What is the extent of a frequency-dependent social learning strategy space?

Bellamy, A., McKay, R., Vogt, S., and Efferson C.

Evolutionary Human Sciences. 4: e13

2022

Pre-existing fairness concerns restrict the cultural evolution and generalization of inequitable norms in children

Berger, J., Vogt, S., and Efferson, C.

Evolution and Human Behavior. 43: 1-15

2022

Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action

Constantino, S., Sparkman, G., Kraft-Todd, G., Bicchieri, C., Centola, D., Shell-Duncan, B., Vogt, S., Weber, E.

Psychological Science in the Public Interest

2021

Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations

Berger, J., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S.

Behavioural Public Policy. 1-26

2021

Promotion of behavioural change for health in a heterogeneous population

Schimmelpfennig, R., Vogt, S., Ehret, S., and Efferson, C.

Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 99:819–827

2021

Investigating the structure of son bias in Armenia with novel measures of individual preferences

Schief, M., Vogt, S., and Efferson, C.

Demography. 58 (5): 1737–1764

2021

Delivering behavioural change at scale: What conservation can learn from other fields

Travers, H., Walsh, J., Vogt, S., Clements, T., and Milner-Gulland, E. J.

Biological Conservation. 257: 109092

2020

The promise and the peril of using social influence to reverse harmful traditions

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., and Fehr, E.

Nature Human Behaviour. 4: 55-68

2018

Behavioural homogenisation with spillovers in a normative domain

Efferson, C. and Vogt, S.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 285: 20180492

2017

The risk of female genital cutting in Europe: Comparing immigrant attitudes toward uncut girls with attitudes in a practicing country

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., and Fehr, E.

Social Science & Medicine – Population Health. 3: 283-293

2016

Changing cultural attitudes on female genital cutting

Vogt, S., Zaid, N. A. M., Ahmed, H. E. F., Fehr, E., and Efferson, C.

Nature. 538: 506-509

2016

Sustained cooperation by running away from bad behavior

Efferson, C., Roca, C., Vogt, S., and Helbing, D.

Evolution and Human Behavior. 37: 1-9

2016

The Impact of Third-Party Information on Trust: Valence, Source, and Reliability

Bozoyan, C. and Vogt, S.

PLoS ONE. 11: e0149542

2015

Female genital cutting is not a social coordination norm

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., Elhadi, A., Ahmed, H. E. F., and Fehr, E.

Science. 349: 1446-1447

2015

Eye spots do not increase altruism in children

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., Berger, Jöel, and Fehr, E.

Evolution and Human Behavior. 36: 224-231

2014

Trust, Cohesion, and Cooperation After Early Versus Late Trust Violations in Two-Person Exchange: The Role of Generalized Trust in the United States and Japan

Kuwabara, K., Vogt, S., Watabe, M., and Komiya, A.

Social Psychology Quarterly. 77: 344-360

2013

Can we see inside? Predicting strategic behavior given limited information

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., and Fehr, E.

Evolution and Human Behavior. 34: 258-264

2013

Viewing men’s faces does not lead to accurate predictions of trustworthiness

Efferson, C. and Vogt, S.

Scientific Reports. 3: 1-7

2011

The dynamics of pro-social behavior in an asymmetric social dilemma: a behavioral game-theoretic approach

Vogt, S., Raub, W., Weesie, J., and Buskens, V.

Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 40: 338-355

2006

Social support among heterogeneous partners: an experimental test

Vogt, S. and Weesie, J.

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination. 1: 215-232

2004

Social support among heterogeneous partners

Vogt, S. and Weesie, J.

Analyse & Kritik. 26: 398-422

2026

Exploring Gender Differences in the Acceptability of Digital Agricultural Tools: Experimental Evidence from Rural India

Marti, E., Vogt, S. Efferson, C.

2026

Social tipping our way – or maybe not – to some kind of future

Ehret, S., Constantino, S., Weber, El., Efferson, C., Vogt, S.

2026

(Anti-)conformity in three dimensions: Social learning in the space between simple heuristics and general-purpose reasoning

von Flüe, L., Efferson, C., Vogt, S

2026

The limits of digital advisory services: Evidence from a field experiment in Madhya Pradesh

Reul, M., Tiwari, L. M., Efferson, C., Vogt, S.

2026

Fun and change: video game edutainment promotes pro-environmental behaviour

Fang, X., Innocenti, S., Vogt, S.

Available at INET Oxford

2026

Unpacking Pathways to Digital Inclusion: Structural Conditions and Gender Hierarchies in the Adoption of Digital Advisory Services

Marti, E., Tschopp, M., Vogt, S.

2026

Identities and Global Cooperation across 18 countries

Duch, R., Vogt, S., Robinsion, T., Zakharov, A.

2026

Can Deliberation Aid Nepal’s Political Crisis?

Reul, M., Rana, H., Pramod, K. C., Gelauff, L., Vogt, S.

2026

Can Democratic Development Scale? Experimental Evidence from Nepal

Reul, M., Rana, H., Pramod, K. C., Gelauff, L., Vogt, S.

2023

Isolating a culture of son preference among Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri parents in Soviet-era Russia

Schief, M., Vogt, S., Churilova, E., Efferson, C.

Available at CESifo

2021

Leading with the (recently) successful: performance visibility and the evolution of risk taking

Ehret, S., Vogt, S., Hefti, A, and Efferson, C.

Available at SSRN

2019

A market for integrity – an experiment on corruption in the education sector

Soraperra, I., Köbis, N., Efferson, C., Shalvi, S., Vogt, S., and Offerman, T.

Available at SSRN

Studying Different Types of Social Influence in Isolation Distorts Our Understanding of How Humans Learn From Each Other

Schimmelpfennig, R., Ehret, S., Efferson, C., Vogt, S.