160 Concepts Examples

“Concepts” are mental representations that can refer to a variety of things, from concrete objects to abstract ideas.

Children start to develop concepts from an early age as packets of knowledge, known as mental schema, in our minds. This helps us to learn to create mental categories and differentiate between simple things like ‘dogs’ vs ‘cats’ and ‘tables’ vs ‘chairs’. As we grow older, our concepts or schema become more and more complex.

Below are some categories of concepts, which will help us sort our examples in this article.

• Concrete Concepts: “dog,” “tree,” “car”
• Abstract Concepts: “freedom,” “love,” “justice”
• Artificial Concepts: “triangle,” “square.”
• Self-Concept: “clever,” “capable,” “incapable”
• Theoretical Concepts: “gravity,” “electron,” “string theory”.
• Relational Concepts: “larger than,” “equal to,” “opposite.”
• Negative Concepts: “injustice,” “abyss”, “unhappy”

Let’s explore some examples from within each category.

Concepts Examples

Concrete Concepts

Concrete concepts are concepts that refer to objects, events, or things that we can physically interact with or observe. Common nouns often fit into this category, because they’re concepts that we’ve created to refer to things.

Abstract Concepts

Abstract concepts refer to ideas or notions that aren’t tangible but can be understood through thought and discussion.

See my Detailed Article on Abstract Concepts

Natural Concepts

These are concepts that we form based on our experiences in the natural world. They often have a fuzzy boundary because nature is complex. For instance, our concept of “bird” might include the understanding that birds can fly, but not all birds fly (e.g., penguins).

Artificial Concepts

These are concepts that are defined by a specific set of characteristics. Mathematical and geometric figures like “triangle” or “square” are examples.

Self-Concept

This refers to how individuals perceive, believe, and regard themselves. It encompasses elements like self-esteem, self-worth, and the image one has of oneself.

Learn More about Self-Concept Here

Theoretical Concepts

These are concepts that are not directly observable but are postulated to understand and explain phenomena. They are comon in academic and scientific research.

See Also: Examples of Theories

Relational Concepts

These are concepts that involve a relationship between different elements. Examples include “larger than,” “equal to,” or “opposite.”

Negative Concepts

These are concepts understood in terms of what they are not. They are defined by their opposition to or absence of a certain property. For instance, “injustice” might be understood as the absence or opposite of justice.

Note: These concepts are not necessarily bad in the everyday term of ‘negative’, but simply, they are defined by the absence, lack, or opposition to another quality.

Conclusion

In the introduction, I explained how individuals form concepts. This was a fundamental idea emergent from cognitive psychology, and specifically, schema theory.

But we can also see how concepts are shared by all of us.

You read through all the above words and understood what they referred to – that’s because you and I, as English language speakers, share both conceptual understanding and a common way of describing a range of ideas, things, entities, etc.

Our shared agreement about concepts like “freedom” and “love”, and shared words to refer to those concepts, are central to our ability to communicate and form a functioning society.

But, to complicate things further, socially-agreed upon concepts change over time. Perhaps most stark is our changing idea of marriage – from man married to woman exclusively, to any human marrying any other human.

In this sense, many social psychologists and sociologists understand that concepts are socially constructed. And that’s what we’ll talk about next. I’ll see you over on my article: What does ‘Social Construct’ Mean?