I've long suspected...

...that what motivates conservatives more than anything else is fear -- fear of blacks, fear of Obamacare, fear of terrorists, etc. Now, reports Kenneth Silber, a new book, The Republican Brain, by Chris Mooney, makes a similar contention (my emphasis): 

The right and left, he contends, diverge not just in opinions but also in thought processes and behavior. For instance, personality tests show conservatives rank lower than liberals in “openness,” a measure of intellectual flexibility and curiosity. 

Moreover, an emerging trend in neuroscience research links ideological dispositions to variations in brain structure and activity. Physiological studies suggest, for example, that conservatives may be more attuned to the amygdala’s fear responses. The left-right divide, Mooney argues, reflects deep-seated (and to some significant degree, hereditary) differences in how we perceive and understand the world.