What Does It Take to Say: “Change Is Really Happening”?

In this final article of the series (O’Brien 2023), I want to share a simple yet powerful framework for how we perceive change. According to O’Brien, three core questions guide whether we conclude that a meaningful change is occurring:

1. Attention – What’s the evidence for change?

2. Evaluation – What’s the quality of the evidence?

3. Disruption cost – What will happen if this change is real?

Attention: Do We Notice the Change?

Let’s take climate change as an example. Consider the following questions:

Have you seen it on the news? Do you see it on social media? Do you notice the temperature change? Do you hear it from friends? Do you encounter protests from climate activists? 

If your answer is no to all of these questions, the change is not salient, and you probably won’t notice anything about climate change. This is the salience of change. Beyond yes and no to these questions, the frequency that you encounter information about climate change can also influence the salience and the propensity of you noticing the change. 

Evaluation: Can We Trust the Evidence?

If your answer is yes to at least one of the questions, you are probably in the second stage - the evaluation stage - of change perception. In this stage, we realize that there might be a change, and we start to evaluate the quality of evidence of change. 

With the same example of climate change, we might ask: 

Can I trust this news channel? Is my friend informed enough on this matter? How convincing are their arguments about climate change? 

Note that evaluation is rarely objective. Our judgments are influenced by context, group norms, political ideology, and prior beliefs. In short, we don’t just evaluate the evidence—we interpret it through our own lens.

Disruption Cost: What Happens If the Change Is Real?

Even when we notice the change and believe the evidence is strong, we might still deny the change—especially if accepting it would disrupt our lives too much.

Let’s take a personal example: you suspect your relationship has gotten worse. Maybe your partner seems distant. You suspect something’s off. But before officially concluding, “He doesn’t love me anymore,” you might ask yourself a new set of questions about disruptive cost:

How heartbroken will I be? How long will it take me to recover? Can I still function at work or during exams? Will I ever find someone else?

When the disruption cost is high (e.g., emotional turmoil, life instability), we are more likely to resist acknowledging the change—even when the evidence is clear. 

When the disruption cost is low (e.g., “I’ll be okay”), we’re more likely to accept the change and move forward.

Note that disruption costs are inherently subjective and contextual; what seems disruptive to me needs not to be disruptive to you, and what was disruptive then needs not to be disruptive now. In other words, the perception of disruptive costs of the same change might vary from person to person, from then to now. 

Final Thoughts on the Change Series

Change is constant; we change, others change, and the environment and society change. 

I hope this series has helped us reflect more deeply on how we recognize, interpret, and respond to change. If there’s one thread that runs through all the papers I’ve shared, it is this: we often judge ourselves and others by very different standards. Our judgments are not always symmetrical. But understanding these biases might help us become more compassionate—with others and with ourselves.

We are all navigating change, together.

Let’s face the shifts of this year with a little more curiosity, a little more understanding, and a little more grace. 

Fin.✨