¶ … 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...

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…