During the past few decades, Norway has been going through a process of immigration and re-establishment of brown bears and wolves. The human dimension is a crucial factor for the governmental objectives of allowing viable populations of these and other large carnivore species to develop. We have reviewed a variety of predator acceptance surveys in Norway. Based on this data we propose a model that is able to explain people's attitudes and fears as a function of the distance between predators and humans, and as a function of the length of experience of living in the same area. In particular we found that the proportion of people with a negative attitude increases to a maximum with the arrival of large carnivores, and decreases with experience over time. The proportion of people afraid of large carnivores is relatively high before carnivore arrival but decreases with experience. Both before and after carnivore arrival, many people that report being afraid still do not have a negative attitude towards large carnivores. Level of fear, therefore, does not seem to be a direct measure of predator acceptance. We emphasise the importance of early implementation of conflict-reduction measures and continuous monitoring of predator acceptance, in addition to biological research and monitoring of the large carnivores.