"The Fascinating Differences Between The Conservative and Liberal Personality "

[MissMarple]

6. Understanding why people have so many differences is imperative.

As qwlauren35 says, Meyers-Briggs helps us as well. Also, Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist, has a great deal to offer. His website has a lot of information, his TED talks are great. Understanding peoples' basic motivations and the different ways we view the world puts us all on the way to better communicating with each other. It helps us get past the demagogues and partisan ideologues.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/

The author of the article ends with this:

"But if our partisan personalities are deeply rooted in our early development and wired in our brains, is honest and thoughtful consideration of our own biases and predeterminations enough, or even possible?" Haidt seems to think so. He seems to think that understanding differences and communicating with each other we can get along much better. He does except the psychopaths and sociopaths because they just don't care about getting along with others. And there may be more of them out there than many of us have thought.