Academic Bio

Nicolas Sommet received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Lausanne in 2014. His doctoral work focused on the structural antecedents and the interpersonal consequences of competitive goals (Sommet et al., 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017; for a review, see Butera et al., 2019).

After one year of post-doctoral training at the University of Geneva (2014-15), he received a UNIL/CHUV mobility fellowship to study at the University of Rochester, NY (2015-16). He kept working on achievement motivation (Sommet & Elliot, 2017), while developing a line of inquiry on inequality.

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Then, Nicolas held a Junior Lecturer position at the NCCR LIVES (2016-20) and obtained a SNSF Ambizione fellowship to study the psychological effects of income inequality (2020-2024) and a SNSF Spark fellowship (co-applicant) to study the psychological effects of social class (2019-present).

During these years, he used cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental data to investigate the effects of residing in places with high income inequality on various outcomes such as health, well-being, trust, and competitiveness (for a review of these findings, see Sommet & Elliot, 2023). 

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Nicolas also published two humorous but rigorous primers on multilevel linear and logistic modeling (Sommet & Morselli, 2017, 2021) and co-developed a method and a web-app to facilitate power calculations when testing an interaction (Sommet et al., 2024).

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Nicolas now holds a permanent research position at the LIVES Centre at the University of Lausanne.