PhronesisCompulsive comparison shopping is a pervasive behavioural pattern in which the agent becomes unable to commit to a purchase or choice without first exhaustively surveying all available options, cycling through comparison spirals that prevent commitment indefinitely. Unlike appropriate due diligence—which is proportional to decision stakes and terminates at a sensible stopping point—compulsive comparison shopping persists well past the point of diminishing informational returns, consuming substantial time and cognitive resources while producing not greater confidence but greater anxiety about unchosen options.
The present paper applies the Displacement Framework to characterise compulsive comparison shopping as a wrong attractor W_CCS distinct from the ground state of calibrated choice S^0—the capacity to make a good-enough decision within a reasonably scoped search. We define the option space O of size n and the searched subset S O, and show formally that for the compulsive comparator |S| n as anxiety grows, while the marginal information value of each additional comparison approaches zero: the comparison-utility inversion.
The Comparison Paradox—the empirically documented finding that more options compared produces less confidence, not more (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000; Schwartz, 2004)—sits at the structural centre of this analysis. Three sustaining mechanisms are identified and formalised: (1) incomplete-information intolerance, in which any unknown option feels potentially superior, making search-stopping dangerous; (2) decision-as-irreversibility encoding, in which choices are experienced as more permanent than they are, elevating the subjective stakes of each decision beyond their actual level; and (3) research-as-competence display, in which thorough comparison is experienced as responsible consumer behaviour, making stopping feel irresponsible.
Nine formal propositions characterise these mechanisms, their interactions, their developmental roots in scarcity and perfectionist environments, and the return paths through search-stopping rules, stakes-proportional research, commitment practice, and reversibility reminders.