Willingham is a great lecturer. Seriously, so engaging. He's funny and makes the material relatable. That said, there's a lot of information presented in this class. A lot. The three midterms weren't too bad, because they weren't cumulative. The final was a nightmare--extremely specific with tricky wording. I don't think the final reflected what I actually learned in the class. There's a curve, though, so the grading is fair.

Willingham is a nice guy and very knowledgeable of the material. The lectures are light, funny and interesting. You cannot use devices to take notes. He moves very quickly through material and you basically need to memorize everything he says. The exams are hard and include specific questions about readings which aren't covered in class. I am not a PSYC major and took this class because I thought it looked interesting. However, I have been frustrated with the amount of material you need to memorize to succeed on the exams. I would not suggest this class if you do not have to take it.

Professor Willingham is a wonderful instructor. The course material is interesting, even to a non-Psychology major. However, we go over several concepts during each lecture, all of which could be on the exam. The midterms are 40 multiple-choice questions, which will refer to one of the many concepts discussed in lecture.

There is not homework for this class, just 4 tests and a final that make up your grade (I think we were able to drop the lowest test, but not the final). Willingham makes his lectures very interesting and engaging, he has a good sense of humor and doesn't post all of his slides -- just the ones with diagrams and graphs. so Thats an incentive to get up early in the morning for class. Overall, I would definitely recommend this class because I learned so much. Just be prepared to study a lot and take good notes in class. There is very minimal reading (like anywhere from 3-15 pg. per class).

Willingham is an awesome professor. If you ask questions he'll try to explain it as thoroughly as possible and outside of class he is also very helpful. That being said the material can be a bit dry at times but I thought it was pretty interesting overall. GO TO LECTURE and take notes. I barely read the book but still did well in the class from lecture notes and doing the practice exams.

I struggled with this class but made it out with a B. When writing notes, copy absolutely everything he says - even if it doesn't make sense. As other have mentioned, the reading is boring but it's not terrible to get through since you're tested on it.

Most importantly, DO THE PRACTICE EXAMS. The questions are very tricky and most have more than 1 right answer. Those got me every time. You have to commit all note examples and concepts to memory and make sure you're over-prepared from the get-go. Don't let the stuff go over your head and then think "Oh I'll just study it later." The TA's I had were pretty bad at making me feel any more comfortable with the material. However, you should definitely go see Willingham sometime during the semester. He was so nice to talk to that I went to visit twice. He is a very nice person, and really influenced me to go into psychology.

Interesting material very hard exams. I understood all the material per Professor W himself; however, the exam questions were extremely difficult to interpret.

I really like Professor Willingham. He explains things well, complements the textbook, and uses lecture time productively. You definitely need to show up regularly. Most of the studying is just getting familiar with/memorizing the info... it's not difficult to grasp. Tests cover both lecture and textbook material, so study your notes on both. TAs have review sessions weekly. Great class for social science students; probably not the most interesting course for people who aren't into psychology. Three midterms, lowest one is dropped, the other two are 30% each. Final is 40%. Clicker questions are recorded by participation and influence the grade by a half-step up/down.

This was such a great class. Professor Willingham is hilarious, down to earth, and very helpful. His tests are difficult but if you take the time to study and are able to understand the concepts well you should be fine!

It seems like I'm going against the majority opinion here, but I honestly feel that Willingham wasn't all that great. A decent and mildly entertaining lecturer yes, but I found it hard to get meaningful takeaways from him. He'd introduce a topic, talk about it, make analogies, a quip or two, we take notes, he'll test us on it later, but it felt like we never got to the significance and at times it was either trivial or common sense. I acknowledge that this is an intro course, and I guess these are foundations, but a little more novelty would have helped.
He would also occasionally put forth several theories that explain a notion with no clear indication as to which is correct. This is confusing, but understandable given the course's nature as it's hard to absolutely prove this kind of thing.

I found the book to be bloated and kind of silly. Although there isn't much reading for the course, and the content overlaps with lecture, tests are bound to include some information from the readings so read carefully :/
On the topic of tests, some of the questions are bound to be horrible. To the point where if you ask him about it later at office hours, he will acknowledge that that it was a bad question. Despite this, one can easily do well on tests by coming to lecture, taking good notes, and using some intuition. People say his tests are hard, they're not really, some questions are just poorly constructed with multiple "right" answers.

This review has taken a turn for the negative. I don't mean to dissuade anyone from the course. Just don't get your hopes up so high with these glowing reviews. Willingham is a good professor, he holds review sessions and is approachable and kind. The course itself certainly has interesting parts, but I found some to be kind of trivial and aimless. Take this course if you're interested in psychology or the mind because it's a good start, but it is not as ideal as described.