Conceptual Change
The Basic Idea
Have you ever read an insightful book or watched a riveting documentary that changed your worldview? This phenomenon can be referred to as conceptual change, where knowledge is restructured and the interpretation of a given conception – be it an opinion, belief, ideology, or notion – is revised accordingly.
You can probably think of an example from your own life, where you or someone you know changed their perspective by learning new information. This could be that introduction to psychology class from first-year University that changed your thoughts about free will. It could also be that convincing piece on climate change in a notable magazine your friend said changed how she thought about sustainability. Although there are many instances of these epiphany-like moments, a key aspect of conceptual change is the element of learning.
Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
