Page 122 - Emotions through the eyes of our closest living relatives- Exploring attentional and behavioral mechanisms
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                                Chapter 5
 Figure 1. Mean scratch rates (±SEM) per 90 s in the baseline and contagion condition. SEM, standard error of mean. **p < .01
Factors influencing scratch contagion
We further assessed potential factors explaining the occurrence of scratch contagion. Overall, the full model fitted the data better than the null model, as the likelihood ratio test (LRT) revealed a significant effect of the predictors on the occurrence of contagious self-scratching (LRT: c27 = 16.29, p = .023). We found a significant interaction between whether the triggering scratch was seen or not, context and relationship quality (Table 1). Specifically, we found no difference in scratch contagion between context and relationship quality when the observer had not seen the triggering scratch. However, using simple contrasts, we found that during tense contexts, scratch contagion is more likely to occur between individuals that share a low relationship quality when the observer had seen the triggering scratch compared with when the observer had not seen the scratch (Figure 2; z = 3.62, p < .001). Furthermore, when only considering the cases where the observer had seen the triggering scratch, we found that self- scratching is more contagious between individuals that shared a low relationship quality during tense contexts compared with relaxed contexts (z=2.30, p=.021) and during tense context between individuals that shared a low relationship quality compared with a high relationship quality (z=2.35, p=.019). Follow-up analyses suggest that this effect is not a by-product of increased visual attention towards individuals with a low relationship quality as more scratches were observed when the expresser and observer shared a high relationship quality (c21= 17.87, p < .001).
It is possible that the increased scratch rates during tense context do not reflect contagion, but are simply a by-product of increased arousal levels during tense contexts in general (Castles & Whiten, 1998). Follow-up analyses revealed
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