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>. The ACC is used to control efforts and also rostral ACC is active in learning intuitively social behaviors. if having small volume of the ACC, people will react more impulsively, and will have difficulty to understand social interactions. This will cause them to perceive unfamiliar people with less understanding and therefore with more mistrust.

Conservative statments make you stop: "Zamboni et al. (2009) found that, regardless of participants’ own political orientation, the processing of conservative statements was associated with greater activity in the right dlPFC—a brain region that is associated with withdrawal motivation, negative affect, and response inhibition in prior research (e.g., Aron et al. 2004; Davidson 1992; Harmon-Jones 2003). Although this finding may have multiple interpretations, one could speculate that thinking about more conservative positions elicited a withdrawaloriented response among these participants, which would be consistent with responses to disgusting or threatening stimuli (cf. Helzer and Pizarro 2011; Terrizzi et al. 2010).