By Benjamin Alva Polley EBS COLUMNIST
America’s debates over wildlife, especially wolves, are often framed as bitter battles between two entrenched camps: pro-wolf environmentalists and anti-wolf rural residents. Scroll through social media or skim the headlines—relating to wolves and beyond—and it can feel like the country is split into warring tribes that can barely occupy the same landscape, much less the same conversation.
But recent research suggests the story is more complicated—and more hopeful.
Two professors from the University of Montana, Associate Professor of Human Dimensions Dr. Alexander L. Metcalf and host of the New Angle Podcast Justin Angle, studied how group identity and misperceptions about others shape residents’ attitudes toward gray wolves (Canis lupus) in U.S. states where wolves live. Across two randomized experiments with 2,296 participants, they found that simply reminding people of their political identity—and measuring their assumptions about what “their side” and the “other side” think—can deepen divides, harden attitudes and make conflict over conservation seem inevitable.
They also found that a simple correction to those assumptions can begin to close the gap.
“We need to emphasize identities we share and start there,” Angle wrote in an email to EBS. “This is difficult, especially given an information economy that thrives on division, but I like to think it’s possible. The views we think we hold most strongly are more flexible than we imagine. This is ultimately a call for open-mindedness and curiosity. We’re not as divided as we’re made to think.”
In the first study, they asked people about their views on wolves after activating their political identity. When politics was made salient, people tended to lean into what they believed their group—Democrat (liberals) or Republican (conservatives)—was supposed to think. Those who already supported wolves became more supportive; those who opposed wolves became more opposed. In other words, identity activation pulled people farther apart.
What made this worse was that many respondents held inaccurate beliefs about how polarized their peers really were. They overestimated how much people in their own party hated or loved wolves, and they exaggerated how extreme the “other side” was. These distorted metaperceptions—our beliefs about what others think—fed a sense of “us versus them” that did not fully match reality.
“A lot of political science research frames difference as a function of how we view out-groups,” Angle wrote in the email. “In our study, what we assume about our own group—and we assume our own group to be more extreme than it is—has more influence on our attitudes than our outgroup views. In other words, it looks like our attitudes about wolves are shaped more by our desire to fit in with our own group rather than by a desire to distance ourselves from outgroups.”
In their second study, they tested whether correcting those misperceptions could make a difference. They shared simple, factual information about what people in their own group actually thought about wolves. This small adjustment—an in-group metaperception correction—helped reduce presumed polarization and weakened the tendency for people to fuse their political identity with their stance on wolves.
The result: attitudes became less extreme, and the sense of inevitable conflict softened.
“I’ve been encouraged by people (agency folks, practitioners, other researchers and some members of the public) starting to wrestle with the notion that the groups they belong to and make assumptions about could be having large effects on their own thoughts, feelings and actions,” Metcalf emailed to EBS. “It’s a difficult concept to internalize, and therefore difficult to incorporate into your work—but I see the wheels turning and the uncomfortability growing in ways that suggest we struck a nerve.”
The lesson for conservation policy makers and practitioners is straightforward but powerful. When we lead with political or cultural identities that we assume are tied to conflict, we may inadvertently deepen divisions and make collaboration harder. Constantly framing wolf management—or any conservation issue—as a battle between red and blue, urban and rural, or “real Americans” and “coastal elites” risks turning flexible opinions into rigid badges of identity.
“I hope people view identity as dynamic rather than static,” Metcalf wrote. “It’s not that we’re automatically and permanently in these different camps. Instead, we have agency to approach these thorny issues from a variety of perspectives and through a variety of lenses—choosing those perspectives which unite us is likely more important than any facts on the ground.”
Instead, we should invest in communication strategies that correct false narratives about how divided we really are. Sharing accurate, local information about what neighbors and peers actually believe can counter the myth of extreme polarization. Designing identity-informed messages that acknowledge people’s values without weaponizing their group labels can open space for nuanced, shared solutions.
Conservation challenges—from predators like wolves to climate resilience—are long-term, and they demand cooperation across lines of difference. Their findings suggest that conflict is not just about the animals or the policies; it is also about how we see ourselves and one another. If we can temper the stories we tell about who is on which side and how far apart we are, we may find more common ground than the loudest voices would have us believe.
In an era when polarization feels inescapable, that is good news—for people and for wildlife.
Benjamin Alva Polley is a place-based storyteller. His words have been published in Rolling Stone, Esquire, Field & Stream, The Guardian, Men’s Journal, Outside, Popular Science, Sierra, and WWF, among other notable publications, which can be viewed on his website.
