People Get so Cheesed Off in an

¶ … people get so cheesed off in an argument? These days it may be about politics, but it can also be about religion, sports, work, etc. Why do people get so angry when making an argument, but not, say, when telling a story? There is a huge difference between arguing and narrating a story. With most arguments, the person's self is intrinsically involved. He or she is supporting a viewpoint that he strongly believes in and sometimes has centered his life around.

Winning that viewpoint corroborates the time, money, and sacrifice that he inserted in living that approach. Admitting that he was wrong would be tantamount to saying that he has wasted much of his life in practicing and living a fallible system. This is the reason why it is usually so difficult to persuade people that their beliefs / socialization / or certain opinions may be incorrect or misleading. And the closer the people are to these beliefs the harder it is to persuade them.

For this reason, too, it is usually believed that the younger the child, the more impressionable and easily swayed. It is popularly believed that the brain becomes 'stale' with age, and that, it is therefore impossible to impregnate one with newer thinking, but neuroscience shows that such is not the case. That the brain can always, through the process of neuroplasticity, learn new patterns.

This is not to say that elderly people can acquire new ways of thinking and change their minds as readily as those who are in the first decade of life. On the contrary, they are usually far more closed to new ideas, but this may be likely due to the fact that they have invested far more of their lives and energy to promoting certain opinions and beliefs and are therefore more recalcitrant to changing them.

An example in kind can be seen with people who convert from one faith to another. The majority of conversions seem to me to occur during the adolescent years through to the 20s. I have heard of relatively few conversions occurring in the 70s and beyond. This may be well due to the fact that an entire and massive life change is involved.

This is not so much due to changing one's mind about a particular argument, but due to the fact that this, and similar arguments, are intrinsically tied up with one's life. Challenge these, and you are challenging the person's life. A story, on the other hand, is simply that: a story. It is detached from the individual's existence therefore less challenging to him. The story is fictitious dealing with an imaginative / fantasy scenario.

It is about an imaginary host of characters and even were horrific and accusatory incidents to happen to these host of characters -- they are, after all, happening to another not to the listener him ro herself. In this way, the listener does not feel attacked and, on the contrary, may likely be entertained by the story. The narrative, in other words, is diverting, whereas the argument may hit the person in the face.

Due to this difference, it may be recommended that some arguments may be best couched as stories in order to be more persuasive and to gain their desired result. Listeners may be more receptive to stories than they are to arguments, less induced to react, and more induced to accept the message. There also seems to b e a gender issue that aggravates the problem. Men need to be right, for if not their self-esteem feels threated. They need to feel in charge, gain the respect, and dominate. Women, on.