– 153 – On mattering maps George Loewenstein and Karl Moene Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. Here in Princeton what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem (1983) By fraternizing with economists, Ole-Jørgen Skog, a sociologist by training, is guilty of disloyalty to his discipline. When it comes to theoretical per- spectives, research methods and styles of writing, he flagrantly disregards disciplinary boundaries, picking and choosing the tools that best address the problem he is addressing. Indeed, in some work, such as his research on social networks and patterns of alcohol consumption, he melds the ap- proaches of different disciplines so seamlessly that it would be difficult to identify the work as falling under the purview of one discipline or another. While many people pay lip-service to the importance of interdisciplinary work, Ole-Jørgen demonstrates just how fruitful it can be. In this essay we cross the border between economics and sociology in the other direction. We discuss the social dependence of preferences, and its im- plications for economics, by pursuing the simple idea that in different social settings, different things are valued. This idea is obvious in sociology, 1 as well as in psychology, 2 but neglected in most of economics. 1 Sociological work on the valuation of individuals by groups is too voluminous for us to review in this preliminary paper; however a particular prominent contributor to this line of work was Erving Goffman, whose many books document the importance of the social realm for self-esteem, and who documents the diverse strategies that people use to achieve and protect self-esteem (e.g., face-saving tactics) and the terrible consequences of losing the regard of the group (e.g., in his 1963 book on Stigma). 2 See, e.g., Baumeister (1998). Chapter 10