What People Are Really Doing When They Play Hard to Get

French philosopher René Girard called this phenomenon mimetic desire: we desire something because we see others desiring it. In other words, our goals mimic the goals of others.

Girard discovered that most of what we desire is mimetic (mi-met-ik) or imitative, not intrinsic. Humans learn—through imitation—to want the same things other people want, just as they learn how to speak the same language and play by the same cultural rules. Imitation plays a far more pervasive role in our society than anyone had ever openly acknow

Mimetic desire, because it is social, spreads from person to person and through a culture. It results in two different movements—two cycles—of desire. The first cycle leads to tension, conflict, and volatility, breaking down relationships and causing instability and confusion as competing desires interact in volatile ways.

If the French critic René Girard was still above ground, he’d explain to the confused anthropologist that among our species, the intensity of competition tells you very little about underlying value. Instead, we borrow our desires from others: a toddler will try to seize a toy which held no interest to him until his playmate wanted it—and we never