is it because the saying u cannot teach an old dog new tricks is quite true?
Depends on what you mean by stubborn and in what context.
At work – Older people are stubborn in the sense they are resistant to changing their ways of working, accepting the opinion of their younger colleagues and embracing new technology. This is often attributed to brain too old cannot learn new things i.e. “Cannot teach an old dog new tricks”.
This I do not agree. From what I can see they seem to have no problems embracing technology and changing their methods when it comes to things like skiving, entertainment, getting porn etc. The main reason for resistance at work is at the end of the day conflict of interest.
Changing their ways of working means they are negating most of their advantage that comes from familiarity in operations. Embracing new technology, new opinion means acknowledging what they know is slowly depreciating in value which means their own worth in the job / company will go down.
They are not against change per se, they are against making themselves redundant, lowering their promotion & increment prospects, reducing the number of people reporting to them etc.
At personal life – I actually find many old people quite open to changes in both hardware and software. However if you want me to narrow down, I would say older people are more “stubborn” in holding on to their world view.
I mean worldview on deeply personal things like cultural affinity, moral values, politics, religion, relationships with different people etc. I find the older we get, the stickier we tend to hang on to our preconceived notions in these areas.
I suppose it is also how many of us keep our sanity and sense of self-recognition when the world constantly changes around us.