I adore Professor Smurda and highly recommend taking a class with her. I took Social Psych with her before taking Influence, which helped my understanding in this class but it is absolutely not necessary to take 135 beforehand. Highly recommend reading the material before class because it helps with understanding the lecture. I also recommend talking with her during office hours and after class, she is very willing to elaborate on concepts. The information from this class is useful in the real world as well; if you have an interest in understanding how people think and ways to use that information, I highly recommend taking that class.

I'm a little surprised by the reviews because I actually found this class to be a little challenging but I thought it was a pretty good class overall. I thought it definitely wasn't horribly difficult at all but I also thought the exams weren't very straightforward. I got an A- in it and also got an A- in 100B so I don't know if that says anything... Professor Smurda was a great professor but I also found her lectures/content to be not so straightforward and a little dry at times. But overall a good class!

By far this has been the worse class I’ve taken at UCLA. The readings are redundant, so you better not have anything else to do because they will consume your time. The writing assignment is a complete joke with unclear guidelines, but points will be deducted based on subjective measures such as and I quote “to me it feels to long.” The lectures are a pain to sit through. I’m a senior with a record of As and Bs in all my classes, but I got a C in this class not because I didn’t do well on the exams and not because the material was hard, but because the professor and her TA had to much power and control over my written assignment, so because they both personally didn’t like me they were able to make sure that I did poorly in this class. Dr. Smurda should be sued for unfair practices along with her TA Macrina Cooper-Smith.

The tests are extremely tricky. It is unfortunate because all the material was understandable and interesting. I did all the readings, quizzes, paper, and study guide. However, nothing was useful in preparing for the exams. It is truly unfair to have tests worded so tricky and the answer choices were all similar as well. She gives 6 quizzes, 1 final paper, and only 2 exams (1 midterm, 1 final). She does outweigh the final more if you do better on the final than the midterm. I would definitely not recommend taking this class with this professor.

Dr. Smurda is one of my favorite professors at UCLA.
Her classes are always full of the most interesting studies, and class is very engaging (I think polleverywhere is such a great way to keep students' attention)
Her exams are very fair and I had a lot of fun with the final paper, which is to use class concepts to influence others.
She provides resources for prepping for exams and overall I have no complaints.
Also, no spoilers, but she also demonstrates concepts through certain means as well.
One last thing is that I took Social Psychology with her prior to taking this class, and there is a lot of overlap. For those who want only new material, this may be disappointing, but for those who want to knock out requirements with less effort, I would recommend.

I really like the subject! Professor Smurda is a great lecturer. Her lectures are engaging, and she makes the lectures fun by adding questions that the students answer into her lectures. This is one of my favorite classes.

Dr. Smurda is a wonderful lecturer and person. In this class, your grade will be based on 4 primary things: (1) midterm (2) paper (3) final (4) weekly quizzes. She provides ample extra credit to bolster your grade. This quarter, she was also incredibly lenient with the quizzes and actually dropped your lowest 2 grades. She's a very warm and welcoming professor, and you can tell she likes interacting with her students. If not for the material, take this class for her!

This class was interesting but definitely not the easy A I thought it would be (coming from a student with a 3.9 cumulative GPA.) There’s 1 midterm and 1 final, and they’re weighted 30% and 40%, with whichever one you do better on weighted 40%. Final was not cumulative. There are 6 3-question quizzes on the readings, with your lowest score dropped. These quizzes are 10% of your grade. There was a final paper due week 9 that could either be a research proposal or application of social influence tactics (6-7 page requirement) that was 20% of your grade. Pam, the TA, is nice and helpful but was very nit picky when grading the papers and took off points for minor APA format mistakes, typos, etc. so definitely proofread your paper before turning it in. Dr. Smurda offers 1% extra credit for participating in poll questions during class, so it’s a good idea to actually attend class, but she also records lectures on Bruin cast. She offers another 1% extra credit for participating in SONA studies. As for the exams, they’re pretty detailed and not really common sense. They draw on really specific concepts from the readings and lecture so you definitely have to do all of the readings and know the material. This class isn’t necessarily difficult, but there is just a lot of reading and memorization involved, and you can’t really just skim by and do the bare minimum if you want an A.

This is my favorite class so far at UCLA. I really like Dr. Smurda's interactive style of teaching. She really cares about her students and the topics covered are some of the most interesting I've come across in psychology. Her tests are fair, but you do need to study because I wouldn't say they are easy. I would highly recommend this class, but I would also suggest attending lecture and doing the reading. It's totally worth it.

This was my second time taking a class with Smurda and honestly, I felt the class was pretty simple and easy. This class is really easy to understand if you have already taken Social Psychology with Smurda as most of the material is basically the same but even if this is your first social psychology type class you should do fine. As long as you show up to class, pay attention, and do the reading assignments then it's easy to understand the concepts. I felt the tests were fair and the paper assignment to be pretty simple as long as you followed the directions. Each test is worth 35% of your grade and there are two of them for a total of 70%, 20% of the grade is the paper, and 10% is little quizzes. Plus she gives 1 extra credit percentage too. Overall I would recommend this class the material is interesting and Smurda does a good job explaining it.