This is the first issue of Brain Lenses. Welcome!
This will be a work in progress that I publish weekly—consider sharing it with a friend or on your social network of choice if you enjoy what you read.
Onward.
—
Mimetic theory was first posited in its modern, holistic, formalized form by the French historian and social scientist René Girard: a man who developed philosophical concepts rooted in anthropological study.
In simpler terms, that means he looked at human history and studied human societal development, and then attempted to glean insights about us and what makes us tick from the larger movements and trends he observed.
His core offering to the world of philosophy and social science is predicated on the preponderance of learning via mimicry witnessed in humans and other species.
Mimicry, in this context, refers to an infant’s propensity to watch other people in order to gain a fundamental understanding of how the world works, how society is set up, and even how to speak, walk, and so on.
From this, Girard extrapolated the concept of mimetic desire, which means, in essence, that we continue to watch other people throughout our lives and when someone else wants something, we will often become internally motivated to want that thing, too.
This is thought to be evolutionarily beneficial because by watching others and seeing what they try to acquire, we can benefit from what they know without having the same knowledge. We can crave coconuts and attempt to acquire coconuts without knowing ahead of time that the meat contained within those giant brown things on the ground might serve as a valuable food source, their husks as building materials, their shells as bowls—and we gain this beneficial desire by watching others who have perhaps eaten coconut before, who have knowledge we do not have. By consciously or subconsciously mimicking them, we can achieve similar outcomes without going through the process of learning why we do what we do or want what we want.
Mimetic theory later branched off in a variety of interesting directions, becoming entangled with religion later in Girard’s career but becoming especially embroiled in the world of economics: particularly the conversation about consumption and scarcity.
This theoretical offshoot—which aims to determine why we want the things we want, why we buy the things we buy, and other marketplace-relevant concepts—provided the economic world with insight as to why different groups of people buy different things by looking at how those things are sold and where successful trends are initially sparked.
According to this theory, a lot of what we want—both in terms of raw possessions and in terms of goals we hope to achieve, be they professional, interpersonal, or related to stature or power or other things of that nature—are primarily desired because they are also desired by others. If fewer people wanted a C-suite position and a corner office, and more people wanted the lower-paid but also lower-responsibility job of working in the mail room, then society might shift and begin to romanticize jobs that fit within that latter category rather than those which grant other sorts of benefits (like the monetary benefits of being a CEO).
This concept is immensely valuable (and seemingly, quite powerful) within the world of branding and advertising, because it means that if you can create implied demand, even if it’s not real, even if it’s completely fabricated but is convincing to your target market, you can sell a lot of something that provides little or no value-add over other things a person might buy, or other places a person might go. You can create demand by making it seem like something is already in demand.
You can see this theory in practice at bars and clubs and restaurants that have lines of people waiting outside, even when the business itself isn’t entirely full. Those people on display outside imply there is great demand, making the place look desirable. This, in turn, can create actual demand: that club looks hopping! That’s probably a better place to be than the one without a line outside, right? Because of this tendency, pretending that something or someone is desirable can actually instigate desire.
The same is true in advertising that includes photos of people enjoying a specific product. The implication is that other people are enjoying this brand of yogurt, this type of sneaker, and that implied validation can prime potential customers to want the product more; can create demand.
Strangely, this seems to work even when we know, logically, that the people in the photos, on the signs, are just actors or models. There are portions of our brain that respond to that externally vetted, implied approval, even when we logically know that isn’t what’s actually happening.
Word-of-mouth campaigns can achieve the same outcome, and the modern online review system has allowed for the large-scale gaming of our subconscious, resulting in a bandwagon effect—a desire to pile on to what we perceive to be the most popular option—based on the number of reviews available for a certain product or service, despite many of us knowing that these reviews are easily fabricated or gamed; are borderline meaningless in many common use-cases.
Mimetic desire, then, can be a leash that leads us around and tugs us toward certain options and outcomes, despite our rational minds often knowing that there’s a great deal of potential for manipulation in a given context.
We might believe that the photos of people enjoying a brand of milk are ridiculous and not particularly compelling, but our brains may still register that fake-enjoyment and insert it into the subconscious formula we use to choose between all available options, nudging us toward one over the others and encouraging us to (incorrectly) post hoc justify the choice we made as something that was logically thought through.
This is just one of many ways that our internal bias system can be used against us, but it’s a good one to keep in mind, as it’s become nearly ubiquitous in the world of advertising and is regularly re-invented and re-integrated into new technologies so that the very systems that are meant to help us make informed decisions instead help those who want to manipulate us, for whatever reason, to do so more efficiently and effectively.
—
If you enjoyed this essay, consider subscribing:
And if you’re digging this publication, you may also dig Understandary: a news analysis publication I write.