I thought this was going to be an easy A class, but it was certainly not. The tests are extremely tricky and do not actually test you on genuine content, especially if you're not the greatest test taker like me. The course now consists of three 40 point multiple choice tests and one 30 point PSA. I actually thought the PSA was the easiest part, but the tests were unnecessarily tricky. Would not recommend.

I loved this class! Professor Wilson literally wrote the textbook and is definitely one of the smartest people I have ever come into contact with. It is very clear that he is passionate about the material and knows it completely. I will definitely say I had more trouble in this class than I thought I would. There are a total of 155 points in the class which is not very much at all, and one bad day happening the day of an exam can, and might, tank your grade. Every single point in this class counts, so study the material. The one complaint I have is that the exams are very, very specific and require you to know the material through and through. Just reading the textbook will not do it for you, you MUST go to lectures and know what happened in all of the studies. Overall great experience thought!

Prof. Wilson really loves what he is doing and he has entertaining lectures. The class is not hard as a lot of the material is pretty logical. There are a lot of readings which can be very long and difficult to keep up with (I spent 4-6 hours on each one) but the information you learn from them is useful and interesting. I would 100% recommend taking this class, especially if you’re in the e school and had to take an HSS elective (this is what I did).

Easy A as long as you do the readings, and attend the lectures. Psych project is graded relatively tough but not worth that much of your grade. Just make some flashcards before the tests and you'll do fine. Prof Wilson is very nice and the tests are fair. If you don't remember an answer to the question you have a good chance you can guess on the test. There's a chance to get bonus points as long as you remember to answer the two questions quizzes each week. All in all, take this class for an easy A if you're willing to read and take notes 4-6 hours a week. #tCFspring2022

As someone who had never taken a psych class previously, PSYC 2600 was a good introduction. The topics covered were interesting and it made me want to take more psych classes. With asynchronous lectures during Spring 2021, the course wasn't the most engaging. It was pretty straight-to-the-point -- you read a textbook chapter, heard a lecture about that chapter, and then took multiple choice tests. I would recommend taking it with Professor Wilson. He's a distinguished psychology researcher and also a good teacher. He cares about his students and has good lectures. He does make you buy his textbook, but he donates his portion of the proceeds to charity. The class had three 40-question multiple choice tests and a 1-minute video + 1 page paper project. Each reading also has one multiple choice question that counts for a little. It is a manageable A class, especially if you're good at multiple choice questions. There were three TAs but I didn't really interact with them.

This has been my favorite class at UVA so far! Wilson makes the lectures and examples relevant to people’s daily lives, and a lot of what I learned has influenced my daily behavior. The readings were kinda long but I didn’t mind because they were so interesting. The online textbook also has an option that reads the text out loud to you, and it wasn’t some fake-Siri voice, it sounded like they recorded actual people reading it, which personally helped me get through the book faster. There are 3 non cumulative multiple choice exams, 1 paper (make a PSA and write one page about it), and daily reading quizzes (some count for extra credit). Exams weren’t too difficult because they ask you to apply concepts to a new scenario instead of specific details about experiments (ex. Questions like “Based on X theory, which outcome is most likely in this scenario?” instead of “What was this tiny detail from an experiment about X theory?”). It takes about 1 week to grade exams. You get your quiz score back immediately. We also had practice exams on Collab and end of chapter quizzes in the textbook, which were very helpful. Wilson is an amazing professor who truly enjoys teaching and really wants to help his students succeed. There was a mid semester course evaluation, he posted lectures a few days early (so we had more time to watch them), answered questions on a Collab discussion board, and he tries to make the asynchronous class more engaging by sending out surveys and using the responses/data in the lectures. I highly recommend taking this class with Wilson!

Professor Wilson is a kind man and one of the top academics in this field. He was a good lecturer and covered lots of different and interesting topics/studies. The material was quite intriguing, as it relates to the social world that exists around us at almost every hour of our day. It was fascinating to see how people's thoughts and behavior are affected by the presence of others, and I feel equipped to recognize certain problems in social situations and how to deal with them. Hence, this class has oodles of benefit for your daily life, as well as your academic pursuits. However, one pet peeve I had was that the textbook had a twinge of political bias. The weekly textbook readings take about 3 hours to get through, so definitely split it up across 2 or 3 days. Take notes on basically everything except the smaller studies that are just briefly mentioned in the text (but take notes on ALL the studies from the lecture). He likes to test you on some of the details that can go unnoticed—the tests were therefore somewhat tricky but not excessively difficult. He gives a paper/video assignment to make a 1-minute PSA using psychological theories/techniques—this assignment requires some careful thought and preparation, but it wasn't difficult ultimately. Overall, an average difficulty class with some really interesting content. Highly recommended.

I disagree with the reviews that call Wilson "ancient" and saying he doesn't know how to teach the course. I found Wilson to be engaging in lecture, and if you really listen and pay attention, the material is very useful and eye-opening. Lectures are easy to follow (powerpoint), and attendance is tracked with clicker question at the end of lecture. If you read the textbook and take notes , the tests are not unpredictable (Test 2 was hardest, but average was still ~34/40). The only complaint I have is the TA's grading of the 2 papers. It's pretty much a toss-up whether you get an A or a C. Just follow the instructions very closely and hope your TA isn't a hardo.

Professor Wilson was a great professor! He is so nice, approachable, and genuinely passionate about social psychology. The layout of the course is 3 all multiple choice tests (not cumulative) and 2 projects. You need to do textbook reading for each class but the work is very manageable. Professor Wilson gives you a practice test and he takes several questions on his test from inside the textbook chapters. Overall, I found this class very enjoyable and easy to get an A in if you just do the assigned work, go to class, and study for 1-2 days before each exam. Also, his grading scale is typically very lenient - you only need like 88% or something to get an A-.

Wilson is possibly one of the worst professors I have ever had at UVA. First of all, he's ancient, so he has no grasp at all of how to teach students in an updated, helpful way. Class is mind-numbingly boring and makes me wish so badly that it was online. Why should I use 2.5 hours of my time every week going to a class and watching a man read words off a screen? The exams are trash and while they mostly test you on conceptual things, he takes random bits of irrelevant information and puts them into the exams to ensure that the class average is a low B. Unacceptable and he should be ashamed of himself. He's knowledgeable but clearly doesn't know how to teach. He's been here for nearly half a century and hasn't changed the way he teaches. His teaching ability is garbage. He could easily improve his methods but he chooses not to. He tells students how to write papers but not how to write papers well. He made me hate this class. People strike up conversations during class because they know they're not missing anything important. One time he pulled up a long video to show us during class and someone in the back of the room starting snoring. He is a joke and this class is a joke. You'll only do well if you have ridiculous quantities of time available to devote to this class. His exams are absurd. The material is interesting but he somehow manages to make it as uninteresting as possible. Oh and one last thing - the most obvious sign that he is old is that he has technology problems every. single. class. Before every class he'll do something weird with the computer system that emits a shrieking sound over the sound system. He is so so so so so old. watching him teach is so uncomfortable because he just so obviously has no idea what he's doing. The worst part is that he himself is guilty of a psychological phenomenon that he claims to be the expert on. People who are bad at something think they're doing great, and people who are good at something think that they are just above average. He thinks he's doing great. Thus, he's doing terrible. It's so ironic that he'll tell us not to be guilty of overconfidence and then doesn't practice what he preaches. I! hate! this! professor!