We experimentally test whether the mere knowledge that the wage one receives for a real-effort task could have been different impacts one's willingness to share in a subsequent dictator game. We compare the transfers of participants who get the same wage in the real-effort task, but who differ as to whether they know the other potential wages. The proposed hypothesis is that participants compare the wage they get to other possible, salient values and encodes the wage as a gain when it compares advantageously, and a loss when it compares poorly. The transfer in the dictator game is then an opportunity to compensate for losses and to share gains. The data shows that knowing that they could have earned less increases the transfers of participants who get the highest wage. Symmetrically, knowing that they could have earned more reduces the transfers of those who receive the lowest wage, but the effect is concentrated on loss-averse participants. The analysis of emotion data, both self-reported and physiological, suggests that emotions are not a primordial explanation for the previous results.