Do Victims Allow Their Egos and Opinions to Dominate What They Believe?

A SCARS Institute Scam Victim Recovery Insight

Many will not like this insight. It speaks to a destructive tendency to allow people’s own ego to gatekeep what they accept as truth.

It may seem so simple and harmless, but this imposition of opinion is highly destructive when it comes to scam victim recovery, in that it allows the ego to decide what is true and what applies.

First, let’s be brutally blunt and truthful: no scam victim is an expert in the crimes, the criminals, or the trauma they experienced, unless they have spent the tens of thousands of hours needed to become an expert. This makes opinions largely irrelevant, or worse, destructive. This is not a question of critical thinking where truth is subject to confirmation. This is purely about opinion, especially during a scam victim’s recovery, where emotional decision-making and cognitive impairment are very common.

That being said, let’s explore this unique version of this problem.

When you hear or read a fact, do you say “I agree”? If you do, you are one of the multitude who now express their opinions on facts in this way.

But why is your opinion needed? If you are not an expert in the subject matter, you are not qualified to express more than a guess. If you were thinking critically, you might express that you need to think about it, or say you will investigate it, or you could accept it based on the source. But “I agree”?

Let me state something important. This is not a personal attack on anyone, nor is it victim-blaming. It is an attempt to point out a behavior that is getting in the way of psychological recovery, where the mind is making every fact, every truth, every bit of professional advice or guidance, something that has to be agreed with. When a person is not knowledgeable about a subject, they should learn the information, and perhaps confirm it, but do not make their opinion necessary to accept it. What happens if they don’t agree? That is called denial.

This is actually a form of resistance or avoidance of truth. Highly negative during recovery. But it is subtle, and most are not aware of it.

The evolution of the conversational compulsion to state “I agree” in response to an objective fact is a relatively recent linguistic development, one that can be traced alongside the rise of digital communication and social media, and the erosion of traditional gatekeepers of information. In an earlier media era, the audience was primarily a passive recipient of messages curated by editors and institutions. The authority of a fact was largely external, vested in the source, be it a newspaper, a scholarly journal, or a trusted TV or radio news anchor. There was less of a perceived need for the individual to publicly validate information; its acceptance was often private and implied. However, the advent of social media fundamentally altered this dynamic by transforming audiences into active participants.

Social media platforms empowered individuals to not only receive but to amplify, remix, and determine what gained visibility through likes, shares, and comments (opinions). This participatory environment developed a new kind of figure: the influencer, who builds authority by resonating with a niche community rather than by adhering to standards of institutional neutrality. As this model became dominant, the very act of engaging with information became performative. The feedback loop between creator, algorithm, and audience, where engagement is the primary currency, has trained many people to signal their stance constantly. In this ecosystem, where viral attention often outweighs accuracy and rumors can harden into perceived reality through repetition and validation, simply acknowledging a fact can feel like a missed opportunity to perform one’s alignment and cognitive competence within the digital public square.

The peculiar compulsion to affix a personal endorsement to objective statements, most commonly with the phrase “I agree”, is a unique linguistic and psychological phenomenon, particularly pronounced in American conversational norms, though it is spreading worldwide. On the surface, it seems like a harmless conversational tic, a simple way to signal engagement. But a deeper look reveals a complex interplay of ego, social positioning, and a cultural shift away from a shared understanding of objective reality. The act of “agreeing” with a fact that requires no agreement, such as “the sky is blue” or “water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level,” transforms a statement of universal truth (an axiom) into a matter of personal validation. The implication is subtle but profound: the fact is not complete until it has been adjudicated by the individual’s own ego.

This phenomenon can be viewed as a form of conversational narcissism. In a culture that increasingly prioritizes individual experience and perspective above all else, every piece of information is processed through the filter of the self: me, my, I. When someone states a fact and the listener replies, “I agree,” they are not merely acknowledging the information; they are inserting themselves into the equation as a necessary component. The unspoken message is, “This fact has now been registered and approved by me.” It reframes the interaction from one of sharing information to one of granting permission for the fact to exist within the conversational space. The speaker is no longer just a conveyor of data but a petitioner seeking validation from the listener, who has anointed themselves the arbiter of what is true.

This behavior is deeply rooted in the psychological need for agency and significance. Something desperately desired, especially by new or recent scam victims. But it comes at a cost, because it is not true agency.

By agreeing with an undeniable fact, a person subtly asserts their own belief in their cognitive competence and moral alignment. It’s a low-stakes way of saying, “I am a reasonable person who recognizes truth,” thereby bolstering their own self-concept. Furthermore, it serves as a social lubricant. In an era of deep ideological divides, simply acknowledging a fact without comment can feel cold or confrontational. Adding “I agree” is a bid for social connection, a way of saying, “You and I are on the same team. We see the world the same way.” It transforms a potentially sterile exchange of information into a moment of bonding, however fleeting. The focus shifts from the fact itself to the relationship between the two people discussing it.

The rise of this conversational pattern also parallels the erosion of a shared, objective reality in public life. When truth becomes relative, and facts are seen as mere opinions with better public relations, the very concept of an objective fact becomes destabilized. In such an environment, stating a fact is no longer a simple act of reporting; it is a political and social statement. By “agreeing” with it, an individual is not just confirming their agreement in its veracity but also taking a side. They are aligning themselves with a particular worldview and signaling their allegiance to a particular tribe. This is why the phrase is so common in discussions around politically charged scientific topics like climate change or public health. To simply state a fact is to invite challenge; to “agree” with it is to fortify one’s position within a group.

This stands in stark contrast to other linguistic traditions. In many cultures, particularly in East Asia, a response to a factual statement might be a simple nod acknowledging that it was heard, a phrase of acknowledgment like “I see” or “Is that so?”, or even silence. The focus is on receiving the information respectfully without centering or injecting the self. The American tendency to immediately verbalize agreement or disagreement reflects a more biased, individualistic, and communicative style, where personal stance is more important than the knowledge itself.

Ultimately, the compulsion to say “I agree” to a fact is a microcosm of a larger cultural shift. It is a symptom of a world where the self is the ultimate arbiter of reality, where social connection is prioritized over objective discourse, and where even the most undeniable truths must be personally vetted and branded before they are accepted. It reveals a deep-seated anxiety about a world where consensus is fracturing, and a desperate attempt to rebuild it, one personal validation at a time. 

So what does this mean for scam victims?

It is important to recognize the ways in which the mind can create resistance or friction to new information. Such resistance is destructive and can stall or impede their recovery, since recovery depends extensively on learning. While it is true that information or even facts can and do change as new research is done, it does not affect the validity of these facts if they are current and the victim is learning for their recovery.

Recognizing this tendency to insert opinion in the acceptance of every fact is an important part of recovery, since those opinions could very well be a part of the indoctrination that every scam victim was subject to through grooming, manipulation, and control. After a scam ends, what is valid in the victim’s own mind must, by necessity, change profoundly to remove the misbeliefs created by the scam.

What matters is not if the victim agrees, but that they spend real time thinking about the implications of a fact or truth to their own crime, manipulations and control, and their experience thus far in recovery. Spending time thinking through how a new fact impacts them is what matters, not their opinion of it. This is the way to learn and integrate new information into their process of healing. If everything depends on their agreement, then nothing is really learned (at least not easily), and their recovery is significantly slowed.

This also rears its head later in recovery too, where a survivor has learned enough that their cognitive biases and logical fallacies become more dominant, such as the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Many later-stage survivors develop unjustified confidence after they have learned “enough,” so that they feel they do not need to learn more, or they turn against those providing the essential knowledge.

The most important thing to remember is this: everything we present you can confirm by doing the work. Opinions, properly formed through thorough thought and critical thinking, are always welcome and actually help recovery. What matters more is how what you have learned applies to your experience, and this takes real contemplation. If you do this, it will help to accelerate recovery.

I am not saying this to scold or belittle anyone. The process of recovery demands radical truth, warts and all. We are here to help each victim/survivor see how the scam may still be a part of their life. We are not here to diagnose any individual; that is the role of their therapist, but we are here to educate everyone and help each of you to learn what may be needed to counter both bad habits from before that contributed to vulnerability, and to provide the insights needed for successful recovery now.

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
February 2026