In your haste to find offense, it seems you didn't read what you quoted very carefully. Let's try it again, with the words you missed put in bold:

"…[W]e consider evidence for and against the hypotheses that political conservatism is significantly associated with...

This is a statement of the evidence they examined, not their conclusion!

How far did you actually get in the report? Did you miss this on page two?

Our first assumption, too, is that conservative ideologies--like virtually all other belief systems--are adopted in part because they satisfy some psychological needs. This does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false, irrational, or unprinciples. From the present perspective, most human beliefs are subjectively rational in the sense of being deduced from a set of premises to which believers subscribe...[footnotes]..., and they are also at least partially responsive to reality constraints. In this sense, any given person's conservatism may well be principled in that it is related logically or psychological to other observations, values, beliefs, and premises. At the same time, adherence to principles and syllogistic reasoning do not occur in a motivational vaccum but rather in the context of a variety of virtually inescapable personal and social motivations that are not necessarily consciously accessible. Thus, political attitudes may well be principled and motivationally fueled at the same time.

In other words, it sounds to me like they're just scientifically studying the commonsense observation that people choose a political ideology or a religion that they find most congenial to their existing psychological makeup and worldview. What in the world's offensive about that?