This class was very interesting and I am amazed at how much I learned about myself and others. This was my first psych upperdiv, so all of the concepts were new to me unlike others who were familiar with some of them from Psych 135. Professor Smurda is engaging and does her best to make the lectures fun and informative. I never missed any lectures even though they're bruincasted, which helps for reviewing for the exams. The midterm and final are both multiple choice exams and are heavily based on the lectures, but also include a few questions from the readings which often coincided with the content from the lectures. The tests are tricky though; I didn't do as well as I would've liked despite feeling confident both times so they must be taken seriously. The application paper was relatively simple and involved applying social influence concepts to a situation in our lives. As far as participation, only 70% is required to receive the full 10% for your grade. Overall, this class is fascinating and I would recommend Professor Smurda, but be prepared to put in the effort to do well as it isn't as easy as it may seem.

I had such an amazing experience in this class. Dr. Smurda is a wonderful professor and one of the best I’ve had at UCLA. She is super approachable and helpful. The class itself is extremely doable and if you study well for the midterm and final you are guaranteed a good grade in the class.
Breakdown:
Midterm: 35%
Final: 35%
Paper: 20% (super easy, applying concepts to your personal life)
Tophat participation: 10% (only need a 70% on this to get 100%)
Extra credit: 1% added to your final grade if you complete 3 hours of SONA.
Lectures are bruincasted, but I honestly never skipped because she is such a great lecturer. The material is super interesting and very applicable to every day life. Also, if you’ve taken 135 some of the concepts are review. Dr. Smurda generally cares about her students and will even remember your name if you go to her office hours or participate in class. Take her! You won’t regret it.

Honestly a pretty easy class as long as you put in some effort. Tests are pretty much based off the slides so just study those well and you should be fine. Class requires some studying but literally if you just spend a day or two reviewing the slides you will do fine

Professor Smurda is a great teacher and is engaging and passionate about the subject. She is very helpful and approachable. Some of the material is a bit dry and repetitive which can lead to a wandering mind when in class or reading. Most of the stuff isn't difficult to understand, but reading is absolutely necessary for this class and there can be quite a bit of it.

The exam questions are application based so memorizing terms isn't very helpful. The paper is not difficult at all and participation requirement is through Tophat which is quite easy to fulfill.

Dr. Smurda is a really helpful professor, but I just found the lectures to be a bit dull because it was mostly reading from slides. The tests were really tricky because there were many questions that had 2 answers that could work. My biggest advice would be to go through all the lecture slides and if you have time listen to the recordings.

This is my second time taking a class with Professor Smurda, and I can honestly say she's one of the best professors I've had so far at UCLA! Her lectures are very organized and interesting, and she does her best to engage with the class. The midterm is based on the lecture as well as some of the book chapters (from 4 books) we read for the discussion, so I'd recommend reviewing the slides/lectures (she uploads her powerpoints to CCLE and her lectures are Bruincasted) and learning the main concepts from the assigned readings. I can't speak much on the final since I opted-out (I did fairly well on the midterm), but it was focused on the second half of the course material, except for some key ideas (the five hypotheses) presented in the first lecture that carry over throughout the entirety of the course. The discussions for this class were alright, they mainly focused on discussing the book chapters we read as opposed to discussing lecture content. Participation also counts towards your grade, which was tracked via iClicker/Reef. Overall, I learned a lot of valuable things from this class and I'd highly recommend taking it with Professor Smurda!

Like the reviewer before me, I took this class because of good reviews and I ended up leaving the class feeling like it was pretty forgettable. Dr. Smurda is nice and her lectures were generally pretty interesting even though they seemed to be largely focused on presenting the results of studies which you really needed to memorize for the tests, although she didn't emphasize that. So many times her slides would only have pictures or graphs, and there were no words explaining them, but then the test questions would be really specific and difficult to answer only using the slides. I would highly recommend listening to the podcast of each class for any slides that don't have words (and there are many). I think people must have complained about this to her because she kept insisting in class that she always had summary slides for each of the studies, and that she never just put a picture, but that was actually not true at all.

Other the final and the midterm, your grade is made up of section, which is mandatory, and participation through iClicker. The four books we have to read for section are mostly interesting, although some are better than others. The amount of reading total isn't too bad either, and I thought all the test questions on the books were really straightforward unlike the questions on the slides. You also have to write short ~175 word discussion seeds on each book which were really easy to get full points on. My TA was Maira, and I would avoid her if possible because she didn't seem to know what she was doing or know how to answer our questions, so I never found section helpful at all.

For participation, Dr. Smurda only required us to answer 60% of the questions for the full grade which I thought was fair. So if you attend section, do the discussion seeds and answer most of the iClicker questions you should get 100% in those areas. You can also get 1.5 points of extra credit added on top of your final grade for doing psych studies which definitely helped me. Overall this class wasn't bad, but I didn't end up enjoying it like I thought I would.

The tests were hard, but she offers extra help and is willing to work with you. The lectures are interesting with real-world examples. There is a lot of reading, but it is important to do it. It is hard, but an interesting class and I enjoyed it. Professor Smurda cares about the students and is often available for help or clarification

This class met all the criteria I look for: material was interesting and easily applicable to my life, tests were fair, Professor Smurda's presentations were clear and easy to study from, discussion sections were informative, and Professor Smurda was very accommodating when covid derailed the final (she allowed us to skip it and make the midterm count for the entire testing category). She also gave us the opportunity to earn extra credit by participating in SONA labs. Overall, a great experience and an instructor who is very knowledgeable about the subject matter.

I hated this class. Based on reviews I thought it would be an easy A, but I think due to the transition to online learning it was HELL. The lectures were so tedious and long with so many details, and the midterm and final literally asked for the most random details from an example experiment mentioned once. The material could have been super interesting but the way it was taught I would rather bang my head against a wall then attend that zoom lecture again. Hopefully it will be better once it gets back to in person learning.