Sonja is an associate 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.

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., von Flüe, L. (Forthcoming). Activating cultural change for good in heterogeneous populations. Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution.

Efferson, C., Ehret, S., von Flüe, L., Vogt, S. (2024). When norm change hurts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 379: 20230039.

von Flüe, L., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S. (2023). Green preferences sustain green washing: challenges in the cultural transition to a sustainable future. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 379: 20220268.

Soraperra, I., Köbis, N., Shalvi, S., Vogt, S., Efferson, C., Offerman, T. (2023). A market for integrity: the use of competition to reduce bribery in education. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. 107: 102110.

Constantino, S., Sparkman, G., Kraft-Todd, G., Bicchieri, C., Centola, D., Shell-Duncan, B., and Vogt, S., Weber, E. (2022). Scaling Up Change: A Critical Review and Practical Guide to Harnessing Social Norms for Climate Action. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

Ehret, S., Constantino, S., Weber, E., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S. (2022). Group identities can undermine social tipping after intervention. Nature Human Behaviour. 6: 1669-1679.

Bellamy, A., McKay, R., Vogt, S., and Efferson C. (2022). What is the extent of a frequency-dependent social learning strategy space?. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 4: e13.

Berger, J., Vogt, S., and Efferson, C. (2022). Pre-existing fairness concerns restrict the cultural evolution and generalization of inequitable norms in children. Evolution and Human Behavior. 43: 1-15.

Berger, J., Efferson, C., and Vogt, S. (2021). Tipping pro-environmental norm diffusion at scale: opportunities and limitations. Behavioural Public Policy. 1-26.

Schimmelpfennig, R., Vogt, S., Ehret, S., and Efferson, C. (2021). Promotion of behavioural change for health in a heterogeneous population. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 99:819–827.

Schief, M., Vogt, S., and Efferson, C. (2021). Investigating the structure of son bias in Armenia with novel measures of individual preferences. Demography. 58 (5): 1737–1764.

Travers, H., Walsh, J., Vogt, S., Clements, T., and Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2021). Delivering behavioural change at scale: What conservation can learn from other fields. Biological Conservation. (257): 109092.

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., and Fehr, E. (2020). The promise and the peril of using social influence to reverse harmful traditions. Nature Human Behaviour. 4: 55-68.

Efferson, C. and Vogt, S. (2018). Behavioural homogenisation with spillovers in a normative domain. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 285: 20180492.

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., and Fehr, E. (2017). The risk of female genital cutting in Europe: Comparing immigrant attitudes toward uncut girls with attitudes in a practicing country. Social Science & Medicine – Population Health. 3: 283-293.

Vogt, S., Zaid, N. A. M., Ahmed, H. E. F., Fehr, E., and Efferson, C. (2016). Changing cultural attitudes on female genital cutting. Nature. 538: 506-509.

Bozoyan, C. and Vogt, S. (2016). The Impact of Third-Party Information on Trust: Valence, Source, and Reliability. PLoS ONE. 11: e0149542.

Efferson, C., Roca, C., Vogt, S., and Helbing, D. (2016). Sustained cooperation by running away from bad behavior. Evolution and Human Behavior. 37: 1-9.

Efferson, C., Vogt, S., Elhadi, A., Ahmed, H. E. F., and Fehr, E. (2015). Female genital cutting is not a social coordination norm. Science. 349: 1446-1447.

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., Berger, Jöel, and Fehr, E. (2015). Eye spots do not increase altruism in children. Evolution and Human Behavior. 36: 224-231.

Kuwabara, K., Vogt, S., Watabe, M., and Komiya, A. (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. Social Psychology Quarterly. 77: 344-360.

Vogt, S., Efferson, C., and Fehr, E. (2013). Can we see inside? Predicting strategic behavior given limited information. Evolution and Human Behavior. 34: 258-264.

Efferson, C. and Vogt, S. (2013). Viewing men’s faces does not lead to accurate predictions of trustworthiness. Scientific Reports. 3: 1-7.

Vogt, S., Raub, W., Weesie, J., and Buskens, V. (2011). The dynamics of pro-social behavior in an asymmetric social dilemma: a behavioral game-theoretic approach. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 40: 338-355.

Vogt, S. and Weesie, J. (2006). Social support among heterogeneous partners: an experimental test. Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination. 1: 215-232.

Vogt, S. and Weesie, J. (2004). Social support among heterogeneous partners. Analyse & Kritik. 26: 398-422.

Schief, M., Vogt, S., Churilova, E., Efferson, C. (2023). Isolating a culture of son preference among Armenian, Georgian, and Azeri parents in Soviet-era Russia. Available at CESifo: https://www.cesifo.org/en/publications/2023/working-paper/isolating-culture-son-preference-among-armenian-georgian-and-azeri.

Ehret, S., Vogt, S., Hefti, A, and Efferson, C. (2021). Leading with the (recently) successful: performance visibility and the evolution of risk taking. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3823176.

Soraperra, I., Köbis, N., Efferson, C., Shalvi, S., Vogt, S., and Offerman, T. (2019). A market for integrity – an experiment on corruption in the education sector. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3409962.