Timing is everything: Unraveling the temporal dynamics of the cheerleader effect

Abstract

Facial attractiveness is one of the most immediate and universal sources of social information. However, current theories cannot fully explain its computational mechanisms, especially with regard to facial attractiveness in a group context. Recent studies have found that faces appear more attractive when presented in a group compared to individually (the cheerleader/friend effect). Does the presentation time of faces influence the magnitude of the cheerleader effect, as time factors have been shown to have a significant impact in many other studies on face perception? Here, we investigated the effect of presentation time on the cheerleader effect, dividing it into two segments: pre- and post-cue time (cue indicates the position of target face). We conducted five behavioral experiments (Exp), testing a total of 473 subjects, including both in-lab and online tasks (with pre-registration). We observed a negative, nonlinear effect of pre-cue time on the cheerleader effect (Exp 1 & 2), indicating that changes in overall group-face presentation time impact judgments of target face attractiveness. We identified the optimal pre-cue duration for peak effect (Exp 3), offering a reference for future research. However, we demonstrated that the cheerleader effect was not influenced by post-cue time (Exp 4 & 5). Our results suggested that the potential perceptual process involved in the “overestimation” of the attractiveness of the target face within a group occurs before cue appearing. In conclusion, our study offered a novel explanation for the cheerleader effect, demonstrating that the duration of face observation during group interactions significantly influences perceptions of facial attractiveness.