**2.3 Procedure**

All participants completed the attribute evaluation questionnaire, followed by two psychological scales, in a sequential order. All tests were completed online via the platform of the Chinese Wenjuanxing (https://www.wjx.cn/) in a quiet computer room in Tongji University. Before they started to rate stickers, they were asked to report the length of using social media per day, the frequency of using WeChat per day, the frequency of using emotive stickers per day and whether they used animal stickers.

#### *2.3.1 Evaluating attributes of animal stickers*

Participants evaluated four attributes on each of the 120 animal stickers on 7-point Likert scales. For each sticker, they were firstly given the sticker image

**87**

*Perceptual Attributes of Human-Like Animal Stickers as Nonverbal Cues Encoding Social…*

together with the label of its intended expression, and were asked the degree to which the label matched what is shown in the sticker from "1- to the least degree" to "7-to the most degree". This rating was followed by three sequential ratings on how human-like the animal character is on the sticker, how cute the animal character is on the sticker, and how expressive the sticker is. The stickers were randomized and the four evaluation questions were presented in the same order per sticker. At the end of the evaluation, all stickers of cats and dogs in the cartoon forms were presented to participants who were asked to identify which animal category the character belonged to. The identification task aimed to ensure the participants can recognize the correct animal category without ambiguity. Overall, average hit rates were 97.62% ± 6.53% (for dogs) and 96.83% ± 12.77% (for cats), suggesting that the accuracy of disambiguating between dogs and cats displayed in cartoon forms

At a subsequent session, each participant received two scales which aimed to evaluate their attitudes towards animals and sensitivity towards the interpersonal relationships: the Animal Attitude Scale (AAS-10; [19]) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; [21, 22]). The AAS aims to measure the attitudes towards the ethic use of nonhuman species and consists in 10 items. Participants had to choose an answer on a 5 point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. The IRI consists in four subscales, each measuring a distinct component of empathy: (1) Fantasy (FS), which measures the tendency to imagine oneself to be the characters in books, film etc.; (2) Perspective Taking (PT), which assesses the tendency to cognitively take the perspective of another; (3) Empathic Concern (EC) which indicates the feeling of emotional concern for others; (4) Personal Distress (PD), which quantifies negative feelings in response to the distress of others [21]. The IRI has 28 items and the participants had to choose an option whether the statement is consistent with their opinion on a 5-point scale. Six scores were obtained for each participant, including the total scores for the AAS and the IRI and the scores for the sub-scales of IRI. The internal consistencies were calculated for each scale through the cronbach's alpha. The consistency was high for the AAS (=.73) and for the IRI (=.70). The consistency were from medium to high for the subscales of IRI (.59 for

The repeated measures ANOVAs were performed on each of the judgments (Degree of Match, Human likeness, Cuteness, Expressiveness). The models treated these measures as dependent variables each for one model, and included Expression, Animal Kind and Form as fixed factors. Follow-up analyses were planned whenever an interaction was significant. Statistic values from pairwise comparisons were corrected for multiple comparisons using the

*2.4.2 Individual differences: correlations and impacts on perceptual attributes* 

To assess the relations between individual difference measures, Pearson correlations were conducted on participants' age, the score of AAS, IRI and its sub-scales.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99485*

*2.3.2 Evaluating individual differences*

FS, .76 for PT, 42 for EC, and .56 for PD).

*2.4.1 Perceptual attributes judgments*

**2.4 Data analysis**

Bonferonni method.

*judgments*

was high.

#### *Perceptual Attributes of Human-Like Animal Stickers as Nonverbal Cues Encoding Social… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99485*

together with the label of its intended expression, and were asked the degree to which the label matched what is shown in the sticker from "1- to the least degree" to "7-to the most degree". This rating was followed by three sequential ratings on how human-like the animal character is on the sticker, how cute the animal character is on the sticker, and how expressive the sticker is. The stickers were randomized and the four evaluation questions were presented in the same order per sticker. At the end of the evaluation, all stickers of cats and dogs in the cartoon forms were presented to participants who were asked to identify which animal category the character belonged to. The identification task aimed to ensure the participants can recognize the correct animal category without ambiguity. Overall, average hit rates were 97.62% ± 6.53% (for dogs) and 96.83% ± 12.77% (for cats), suggesting that the accuracy of disambiguating between dogs and cats displayed in cartoon forms was high.
