Tory Higgins

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, if you're interested in this class dont doubt to take this course. Higgins is such a nice and passionate lecturer about his subject and will prove several of the points he's talking about in class with really interesting exercises. He made me passionate about a subject I didn't know I had a passion for. if you're having doubts about him because of the "little boring" and "low volume" comments, let this be one of the few instances where you disregard all those and simply take the class. Please listen to me, have patience with Higgins speech, and seat in one of the front rows in his class. You won't be dissapointed

This class is a little boring, but Higgins is adorable and has a sense of humor.

This class was really interesting and it'd be hard to find another professor at Columbia that is as knowledgeable or excited/happy to teach as Professor Higgins. He is really nice/helpful and is always willing to slow down or speed up depending on the needs of the students. Grades are based almost entirely on one midterm and one final exam, but he lets you choose if you want the exam to be majority multiple choice or essay (so you can play/study to your own strengths). As long as you pay attention (pretty much) in lecture, go over the lecture notes he posts on courseworks if you miss class, and read the chapter summaries of the book a few nights before the exam, you will get at least an A-. The only issue is that Professor Higgins is getting on in years, so he speaks really quietly. If you get put in a non-echoey lecture room, sit in the front or you won't hear anything.

Professor Higgins truly is knowledgeable in his field... but it was the most boring class I have ever taken. None of the lecture notes line up with the textbook. I think it was the class I enjoyed the least in the psych dept and I love psych.

I'll admit, the material taught in class doesn't really match what's in the reading, but I wouldn't let that be a reason not to take this course. Because of the pandemic, I would treat his lectures more like an informational YouTube video (watch while doing chores) and make sure I understood everything in the "lecture X takeaway" document posted after each lecture. His lectures are where most of the essay questions come from. If you put even the slightest bit of effort into connecting the different experiments in class and comparing them prior to the exam, you'll be fine. As for the readings, studying from a simple Quizlet for all the key terms in the margin of the text and reading the chapter & section summaries should suffice. If the TA's mention something in the text during the review session, obviously read the surrounding paragraphs in the text. This should be enough for the multiple-choice. The papers are based on the text. There's really no way around that. Overall, I found the class enjoyable and interesting. The TAs were super approachable and helpful. If you need the Prof. to read an email, ask the head TA to make sure he sees it. For context, I got an A and I think the mean was an A-/B+

Despite the online format, I really enjoyed this course. Not only is Professor Higgins charming and engaging, but he is also incredibly knowledgeable and humble. (You'd never guess he was so highly regarded in the psychological community based on his personality but his research seems to be important based on being mentioned multiple times in the textbook). He seems to really care about his students and tried to make the Zoom classes as interactive as possible, but was also very adaptive and receptive to students' dislike for breakout rooms. The two one-page paper assignments were graded fairly, and the grading scale for the papers and the exams was more than generous (an 84 was a B+). I'm unsure if this is standard for an in-person class, but if not, I think it proves how willing Professor Higgins is to help students succeed. Like the other reviewer mentioned, the exams required knowledge of the textbook, but the questions mostly required general knowledge, which seemed like they were easy to answer if you did the readings. Not to sound like a jerk, but that is pretty much a basic requirement for most classes you take at Columbia, so it shouldn't be a shock. Also, Professor Higgins told us that the readings would be a large portion of the exam in the first week of class. Overall, if you keep up with the readings (or even read over the key points in each chapter) and watch the…

Although the class material is interesting and Higgins is a famous researcher, the class was disorganized. There are no practice tests to prepare you for the midterm and final, and the textbook overlaps with the class material in about 50/50% of the times. Mr. Higgins decides what research matters from his own or from the people that best represent his point. Also, he tells the class where he disagrees with the textbook sometimes. Otherwise, you better guess. It is imperative to show up to every single class or you won't have the material that you need for the exams. The exams can have two right answers, but we have to guess the best right answer between them, which I found tricky. The online notes given by the TA's don't have all the material that you need to succeed. They are a poor summary of the lecture. In addition, the tests don't really reflect your knowledge. There is a lot of memorization as expected from a psychology class. This class requires more preparation and time with Higgins than you think for an A .Lastly, he has a good sense of humor, is kind and knowledgeable. Yet,I wouldn't take the class with him again, unless I have more time.

This was the best class I've ever taken at Columbia. He goes through the material very slowly, so it's a class for students who like depth over breadth. I attended all the lectures and paid attention, not so much because my grade required it but because I got so much out of going. Tory is a leader in the field but he is also an incredible teacher. I highly, highly recommend this class to anyone, whatever you're studying. Attend the first few lectures to see if you like his style, and go from there.

Lectures were very slow; he never uses Powerpoints unless it's for in-class "experiments," so it's difficult to take notes and pacing is very odd. I took the class with a friend who really liked the slow and repetitive lectures, but I found them exhaustingly boring. Tory also has a tendency to overgeneralize. He's definitely a big name in the field, and his insights into some commonly cited social psych experiments is very valuable, but his gender essentializing ("men are always like this, women are always like this") gets really grating after a while - especially since it seemed taken for granted that these differences were natural or innate. The material is so interesting; I just wish he were a more engaging lecturer.

I don't know why Higgins doesn't have a gold nugget. He is a bona fide brilliant professor. Higgins is brilliant in the traditional sense, of course. He's an academic bigwig, and his studies and pictures will appear in more psychology textbooks than you can handle. This, to me, is always less important than how good of a teacher someone is (after all, we're at Columbia. I'd at least hope that my teachers were accomplished and intelligent). Higgins is remarkable in this way, too. His lectures are engaging, keep you involved, make you laugh, and blow your mind at times. He relates facts and take-aways easily and runs through the main points and ramifications of every experiment, relating it to the four broad themes of the course. If you have a hard time paying attention in class, I can see why you may have complaints. His powerpoints are bare because he saves almost all of the information for the physical act of lecturing, and though the TAs do a good job with the distributed "take home messages" of each lecture, they're not enough. But I am generally as ADD as they come and I was swept up in all of his lectures. Again, he's an incredibly interesting person to listen to. He makes you want to go and take down every word out of his mouth. Sign up for this class. You'll really like it. But once you're in, commit to it. You'll get so much out of it because you're taking it seriously…