There is a new study out of Stanford University that has basically turned the assumption of compulsive shopping disorder (also called compulsive buying disorder and Oniomania) on its head. It was assumed that this was a disorder mainly afflicting women, but the new study throws that assumption out the window with it being a problem for just as many men as women:

Prior to this study, researchers estimated that compulsive buying disorder affected between 2 and 16 percent of the U.S. population and that 90 percent of sufferers were women. Koran launched this study to get a more definitive estimate of how many people were affected by the disorder…

The researchers found that 6 percent of women and 5.5 percent of men had symptoms consistent with compulsive buying disorder. The gender-adjusted prevalence rate was 5.8 percent.

Koran said the fact that men and women have similar rates of compulsive shopping tendencies was surprising. “The difference that we observed between the prevalence in women and men is quite small and contrasts with the marked difference reported in clinical trials, in which women constituted 80 to 95 percent of the participants,” the authors noted.

Some of the other findings from the study: