Whats the difference between being compulsive and being impulsive?
This was selected as Best Answer To me, it seems that one who’s compulsive just does it for whatever reason and simply cannot stop. For instance, a compulsive shopper needs to buy and buy and buy. Even buying stuff he or she doesn’t actually need. Why? Because he or she just has to have it! Now why he or she is buying may be known or unknown to ther person. But the urge to buy is ever-present and driving that person all the time. So with compulsion, the urge to do repeat behavior is ever-present and literally unstoppable without outside intervention. By contrast, somebody who’s impulsive doesn’t have that constant urge to do it. It’s more of a spur of the moment that drive the urge. So an inpulsive shopper isn’t one who just has to buy and buy and buy. It’s someone who wasn’t originally planning on buying at first. But merely did so at the last-minute when confronted with something needed or cheap. In some of my classes, I’ve used the example of a person standing on the checkout line.
