Timing is Everything Unraveling the Temporal Dynamics of the Cheerleader Effect

Faces appear more attractive when presented in a group compared to individually, which is called cheerleader effect. However, the presentation time of faces is likely to influence the cheerleader effect, as time factors have been shown to have a significant impact in many other studies on face perception. Here, we conducted five experiments to investigate the effect of presentation time on the cheerleader effect. Across five behavioral experiments (including in-lab and online tasks, and pre-registration), we tested 473 subjects. We observed a negative, nonlinear effect of pre-cue time (the time before indicating the target face's location) on the cheerleader effect (Experiments 1 and 3). Moreover, via a novel design, we identified the optimal pre-cue duration that produces the peak cheerleader effect (Experiment 3), which can provide a reference for future research on setting presentation times. However, the cheerleader effect was not influenced by post-cue time (Experiments 4 and 5). These results suggest that the potential perceptual process involved in the "overestimation" of the attractiveness of the target face within a group occurs before cue appearing. From the timing perspective, this study provides a novel contribution to unifying the underlying mechanisms of the cheerleader effect.