Association of Personality Traits With Compulsive Buying

Abstract

Shopping is an integral part of our economy and every day's life in today's society The current study aim to assess the association of personality traits and impulsivity with. Further, it also intend to assess variance of compulsive buying, personality traits and impulsivity across Age, Gender, Education level, and employment status. After thorough literature review, it was hypothesized that there would be association of personality traits (i.e. Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness) with compulsive buying. Secondly it was hypothesized that there would be an association of Impulsivity (i.e. Attentional, Motor, Non planning) with compulsive buying. It was also hypothesized that there would be significant demographic wise difference on the variable of personality traits and impulsivity. The total sample of the study comprised of 300(120 males & 180 females) participants. Research measures used were: demographic Information sheet, Compulsive Buying Scale (Valence, d’Astous & Fortier ,1988), MINI IPIP Personality measure (Donellan, Oswald, Baird & Lucas, 2006) and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale –BIS 11 (Patton, Stanford & Barratt ,1995). Results indicate the significant positive correlation of Neuroticism personality trait with Compulsive buying whereas negative correlation was obtained between Openness ,Conscientiousness personality and Compulsive buying. Impulsivity was also positively correlated with compulsive buying. .Results also indicate that Openness personality trait and subscales of Impulsivity i.e. Attentional, motor and non planning predicts compulsive buying. Moreover, Neuroticism personality trait was found higher in females as compared to males Among the age groups, Openness, Agreeableness and conscientiousness was found higher in older adults Among the socioeconomic status, high level of neuroticism was found in middle class and high level of extraversion was found in upper class. Among the educational level, the graduates and postgraduates have high level of openness to experience while agreeableness, was found higher