Jost at al, summerizing a 50 years of research on the causes of conservatism had suggested that the two main casus of conservatism are fear and a feel of urgent<ref>[http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-conservatism-as-motivated-social-cog.pdf Jost, J., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A., & Sulloway, F. J. (2003). Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375.]</ref>. These finding where partly supported by new evidance from the emerging field of brain research. A chronic state of conservatism is characterized by smaller anterior cingulate cortex ([[ACC]]) and enlarged amygdala<ref>[http://amodiolab.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jost-Amodio-2012.pdf Jost, J., & Amodio, D. (2012). Political ideology as motivated social cognition: Behavioral and neuroscientific evidence. Motiv Emot, 36, 55–64.]</ref> <ref>[http://blog.psico.edu.uy/cibpsi/files/2011/04/brains.pdf Kanai, R., Feilden, T., Firth, C., & Rees, G. (2011). Political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults. Current biology : CB, 21(8), 677–80. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.017]</ref>. Alos The Amygdala is involved emotional learning, and especially fear conditioning <ref>LeDoux, J. E. (1992). Brain mechanisms of emotion and emotional learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2(2), 191–197. doi:10.1016/0959-4388(92)90011-9</ref><ref>LeDoux, J. (2004). The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 23(4-5), 727–738. doi:10.1023/A:1025048802629</ref>.The [[ACC]] is active in conflict detection <ref>Botvinick, M. M., Cohen, J. D., & Carter, C. S. (2004). Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: an update. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(12), 539–546.</ref>. And is a major player in the process of creating novel knowledge after puzels <ref>Holroyd, C. B., & Yeung, N. (2011). An integrative theory of anterior cingulate cortex function: Option selection in hierarchical reinforcement learning. The Neural Basis of Motivational and Cognitive Control, 333–349.</ref><ref>Holroyd, C. B., & Yeung, N. (2012). Motivation of extended behaviors by anterior cingulate cortex. Trends in cognitive sciences, 16(2), 122–128.</ref>.  Also it was found that conservatives handle risk with the right amygdala, while liberals deal the same tasks with the left insula<ref>[http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0052970 Schreiber, D., Simmons, A., Dawes, C., Flagan, T., Fowler H., J., & Paulus, M. (2009). Red Brain, Blue Brain: Evaluative Processes Differ in Democrats and Republicans.]</ref>.

The Amygdala is involved emotional learning, and especially fear conditioning <ref>LeDoux, J. E. (1992). Brain mechanisms of emotion and emotional learning. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 2(2), 191–197. doi:10.1016/0959-4388(92)90011-9</ref><ref>LeDoux, J. (2004). The Emotional Brain, Fear, and the Amygdala. Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology, 23(4-5), 727–738. doi:10.1023/A:1025048802629</ref>. The amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks <ref>Bickart, K. C., Wright, C. I., Dautoff, R. J., Dickerson, B. C., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). Amygdala volume and social network size in humans. Nature neuroscience, 14(2), 163–4. doi:10.1038/nn.2724</ref>.