There's a chapter in the book "Automate This"[1] (Chapter 7) that deals with research that will make you highly effective in communicating with other people. It focuses on the research of a man called Dr. Taibi Kahler[2], who broadly breaks people down into 6 categories:

1. Emotions driven people

2. Thoughts based people

3. Actions driven people

4. Reflections driven people

5. Opinions driven people

6. Reactions based people

Everybody has a mix of some/all of the above, but one personality type dominates.

Before you scream "bullshit!", bear in mind that this research has been used by NASA to ensure that personality types that don't mix well don't end up as astronauts together in extremely dangerous space missions, and it also helped Bill Clinton to unseat an incumbent president in the 1992 US Presidential race.

Here's a simple article about it: http://www.bottomlinepublications.com/content/article/busine...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Automate-This-Algorithms-Markets-World...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taibi_Kahler