Compulsive shopping, now there is a test to diagnose it – The Republic

CREDIT CARDS and ecommerce sites that make a joke shop, viral advertising campaigns, and the comparison on Facebook that encourages us to look your best. In short, never before has it been easier to develop an obsession for shopping. Like all habits, however, also buy clothes and furnishings can turn into a pathological behavior: the syndrome of compulsive buying, authentic shopping addiction that can ruin the lives of sufferers. Unlike other addictions, such as that by drugs or alcohol, compulsive buying is not easy to diagnose. For this, a team of researchers from the University of Bergen (UiB) have developed the Bergen Shopping Addiction Scale: an instrument with which psychologists and caregivers can identify cases in which the love of shopping turns into pathology.
To verify the effectiveness of their new scale diagnostic researchers have tested on over 23 thousand people, publishing the results in the journal Frontiers in Psychology . Explains Cecilie Schou Andreassen, Uib researcher who led the research, the use of the new diagnostic tool has allowed us to observe a number of common characteristics among people who suffer from shopping addiction.

“The shopping addiction is clearly more common within certain demographic groups is predominant among women, typically emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood, and it seems to diminish somewhat in the years going forward, “says Andreassen. “Our research also shows that people who have extremely extroverted and neurotic traits are more at risk of developing this addiction.”

The extroverted, explains the researcher, using shopping to express their individuality and increase their social status and their attractiveness. Neurotics, who suffer more easily from anxiety and depression, recurring purchases to reduce their negative feelings. In both cases there is a greater risk that it gets out of hand, and shopping you face disease.

On the other side of the spectrum however, personality traits such as diligence, conscientiousness, love for intellectual stimulation and novelty seem to characterize those who have a very low risk of developing addiction.

If you are interested to test the scale Berghen provides the answer to the following seven statements, each of which It is assigned a number from 0 (completely disagree) to 4 (completely agree). The results of the study, says Andreassen, indicate that assign 3 or 4 to at least four questions provides a diagnosis of dependence. Here they are:

– Do you think shopping any time
– Shop to change your mood
– Make shopping so much that this has a negative effect on your commitments (school, work. ..)
– you seem to have to buy more and more items have the same satisfaction than once
– You have decided to do less shopping, but you can not
– You’re uncomfortable if some reason can not go shopping
– Make shopping so much that this has compromised your wellbeing

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