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"Anti-science attitudes seem to be often caused by fear of rejection in social groups. For instance, climate change is perceived as a threat by only 22% of Americans on the right side of the political spectrum, but by 85% on the left. That is, if someone on the left would not consider climate change as a threat, this person may face contempt and be rejected in that social group. In fact, people may rather deny a scientifically accepted fact than lose or jeopardize their social status."
it seems like the opposite example would fit better with this sentence? This seems to imply that the 'anti-science attitude' is seeing climate change as a threat. Sock-the-guy (talk) 22:27, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How about simply "attitudes about science", because that's what the data is actually saying, is that such attitudes are socially informed. Remsense诉22:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OH I thought you meant changing the entire paragraph. I see what you mean now.
Maybe something like:
"Attitudes towards scientific subjects seem to be often caused by fear of rejection in social groups. For instance, climate change is perceived as a threat by only 22% of Americans on the right side of the political spectrum, but by 85% on the left. That is, if someone on the left would not consider climate change as a threat, this person may face contempt and be rejected in that social group. In fact, people may rather deny a scientifically accepted fact than lose or jeopardize their social status." Sock-the-guy (talk) 22:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also maybe 'desire for acceptance' or something similar instead of 'fear of rejection', not for any specific reason but I think it carries a more neutral tone? Sock-the-guy (talk) 22:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It should reflect what the source says, as neutral point of view is not "no point of view": Cracking open the source, though there's no page cited in How minds change, here's a pertinent excerpt:
Humans aren’t just social animals; we are ultra-social animals. We are the kind of primate that survives by forming and maintaining groups. Much of our innate psychology is all about grouping up and then nurturing that group—working to curate cohesion. If the group survives, we survive. So a lot of our drives, our motivations, like shame, embarrassment, ostracism, and so on, have more to do with keeping the group strong than keeping any one member, including ourselves, healthy. In other words, we are willing to sacrifice ourselves and others for the group, if it comes to that.
"There are a lot of terms for this in modern psychology, political science, sociology, and so on—I prefer “tribal psychology,” but it’s also called “extreme partisanship,” “cultural cognition,” et cetera. Whatever the label, the latest evidence coming out of social science is clear: humans value being good members of their groups much more than they value being right, so much so that as long as the group satisfies those needs, we will choose to be wrong if it keeps us in good standing with our peers.
When I asked sociologist Brooke Harrington her thoughts on all this, she summed it up by saying, if there was an E=mc2 of social science, it would be SD > PD, “social death is more frightening than physical death.”
So, while I think important claims like this could do with more rigorous sourcing than this, which is definitely anecdotal and narrative rather than wholly scientific itself—if this is the source we're writing from, "desire for acceptance" represents the text less well. More extreme versions of such tone problems can be considered editorializing, and even assigning undue weight to claims or WP:original research on Wikipedia. Remsense诉22:58, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to know more than I do so I'm going to bow out of this discussion, I was just trying to point out something in the article that felt off to me. Sock-the-guy (talk) 23:03, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As this is an article of such a broad scope, I think it may be better to simply remove "current" stuff (such as the COVID and global warming controversies) and keep the article as timeless as possible. There are plenty of other articles with a more specific focus where those controversies can be explained. I would also remove the table with the opinions on global warming divided by political party: that's just a controversy specific to the US and it is irrelevant elsewhere. Cambalachero (talk) 14:00, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]