Jost et al, did a very large survey on research about conservatism. They have found two main causes to conservatism. One is a reaction to a state of fear, and the other is a reaction to a need to do work in limited time<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>. Thier findings where The idea that threat is causing people to bevcome more conservatives was further corroborated by an experiment that showed that under fear conditions, liberal students judge like conservative students<ref>[http://www.yorku.ca/ianmc/readings/NailMcGregorConservativeLiberalsJESP2009.pdf Nail, P. R., McGregor, I., Drinkwater, A. E., Steele, G. M., & Thompson, A. W. (2009). Threat causes liberals to think like conservatives. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 901–907. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.013]</ref>.