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 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>.