*2.3.2 Evaluating individual differences*

*Types of Nonverbal Communication*

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**2.3 Procedure**

**Figure 1.**

*2.3.1 Evaluating attributes of animal stickers*

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.

*Exemplar stickers that express intended agreement by five kinds of animals in both cartoon and real forms.*

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

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