I came to trust certain wild bears to such an extent that I allowed dozens of inexperienced volunteers to walk and sleep with them day or night without a worry, even with mothers and cubs. Grandmothers, secretaries, and veteran hunters, alone or in pairs, logged hundreds of hours of observations of calm foraging behavior and tender care of cubs. The volunteers weren't panicked by occasional aggressive displays once they understood the behavior. Our change in attitude toward black bears was not a matter of courage or recklessness. It was just a matter of keeping open minds and letting facts erase the misinformation we grew up with.
Most bear stories are either exaggerations or involve incidents that are the rare exceptions.
Warnings about bears usually don't distinguish between black bears and grizzly bears and are intended more to prevent liability problems than to truly educate the public. Museums typically contort the faces of mounted bears to show unnatural snarls. My lifetime of misinformation about the ferocity of bears seemed to be confirmed when I captured my first bears for study. From the confines of the live-traps, they lunged and snapped and swatted. They were scared and had no way to retreat.