You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh. Today's talk features communications researcher

Dana Gail Young, who studies the link between our psychology and politics. You can break down our

personality types into people who are more open and flexible and those who prefer more order.

In her TED 2020 talk, Young says both sets of traits are crucial to any society, but our differences are being dangerously used

to divide us. What if things weren't that way? I'm a political and social psychologist. I study how people understand the world and what this means for society and for democracy, which as it turns out is quite a lot. Some people see the world as safe and good, and this allows them to be okay with uncertainty and to take time to explore and play.

Others are acutely aware of threats in their environment.

So they prioritize order and predictability

over openness and experimentation.

In my academic research, I study how these two approaches

shape how we think and feel about

everything from art to politics.

I also explore how political elites and partisan media use these very differences to engender

hatred and fear and how the economics of our media system exploit these same divides.

But after studying this, I have come away not with a sense that we are doomed to be divided,

but that it's up to us to see both sets of traits as necessary and even valuable.

Take, for example, two men who have been so influential in my own life. First, my late

husband, Mike, he was an artist who saw the world as safe and good. He welcomed ambiguity and play in his

life. In fact, we met through improv comedy, where he taught improvisers to listen and be open

and to be comfortable not knowing what was going to happen next. After we got married and had our baby boy,

Mike was diagnosed with a brain tumor. And through months of hospitalizations and surgeries,

I followed Mike's lead, trying to practice being open,

trying to be okay not knowing what was going to happen next.

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