Where do social preferences come from?

• Test for a spillover of sharing norms from the workplace to a laboratory experiment.
• Fishermen exposed to different sharing norms play the ultimatum game.
• Fishermen exposed to 50/50 sharing rules are more likely to reject unequal splits.
• Effect is stronger for fishermen who have been exposed to a sharing norm for longer.
• Results are consistent with the hypothesis that workplaces shape social preferences.

Where do preferences for fairness come from? We use a unique field setting to test for a spillover of sharing norms from the workplace to a laboratory experiment. Fishermen working in teams receive random income shocks (catching fish) that they must regularly divide among themselves. We demonstrate a clear correlation between sharing norms in the field and sharing norms in the lab. Furthermore, the spillover effect is stronger for fishermen who have been exposed to a sharing norm for longer, suggesting that our findings are not driven by selection effects. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that work environments shape social preferences.

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