?w=655&h=495
= new reply since forum marked as read
There are some who change parties and viewpoints. Most just absorb the culture around them without much of any critical thought process.
Too many are just easily brainwashed.
I supposed it could be reduced down to the question: is empathy taught or innate? But I think that's probably an oversimplification.
I have too have argued that we are hardwired. I was born into a family of idiot republicans, grew up in a totally republican town and in a republican state. Everyone called me weird. 
Guess I answered my own question. Pardon my rumblings. 
I started reading about personality because I was wondering what on earth was wrong with "those" people. Turns out there's a lot right with moderate cons, and even strong cons can be good as long as they stick to caring for their little tribes and leave outsiders alone. Of course, liberals should be running the country. Those are my own conclusions, anyway.
As for what scientists think, they have discovered that people around the planet are all born with personalities that are liberal or conservative to various degrees and emotional involvements. Likely now libertarian as a third (and who knows maybe others to be discovered? There is no "moderate" personality type.
After that environmental forces go to work and can have very strong effect, leaving most of us spaghetti-heads of different orientations on different subjects - but they do not erase the basic orientations. You're obviously the typical blue-eyed child raising eyebrows in a family of brownies. 
Turns out liberal and conservative personalities are really different, strong liberals and strong conservatives especially so. We have very basic differences in many areas, but politically especially in attitudes toward equality, change, and conformity. Liberals are strong on equality, accepting of change, and yawn at the third. Cons tend to be comfy with inequality, resist change, and love conformity -- all to varying degrees in different people of course.
We are actually wired to see moral issues differently! And, importantly, conservatives have a notably darker view of human nature than liberals do. Also, conservatives are oriented strongly to their own "tribe" and suspicious of outsiders, liberals more open to and accepting of other peoples and ways.
We even process information in different directions - liberals to the analytic center first and then over to emotional center for reaction, conservatives emotional center first and then over for analysis. Liberals are big on empathy, conservatives somewhat less so the stronger they go, with the far right with a real problem -- especially to outsiders.
Altruism, willingness to sacrifice for others, is another interesting one. Libs and cons are both altruistic, but conservatives mostly to their own "tribe," i.e., a smaller population, while libs are altruistic toward larger populations. Does this alone explain something about how we feel about taxation and using government to solve large social problems, or what?!
Study of libertarians is just being started, but seeming we are fortunate they are a smaller group because apparently they mostly are altruistic only toward themselves. And, although libs and cons both have full baskets of moral issues they care about, libertarians are oriented very strongly to personal liberty, with other moral issues less important -- if on the list at all. They apparently process information even more analytically than liberals. Wouldn't it have helped if most people knew this stuff before libertarian ideology started worming its way back into our economy - again?
Anyway, this is sort of what they think we know so far, more coming along every day. They've identified genes associated with voting and not voting and can usually tell L-C orientation on MRI by which processing center is more developed. So, you're not only right in your observations, but provably so. 
