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Description: Previous studies suggested we have adaptive abilities to detect cheats, but an alternative view is that rarer or unusual events in social exchanges are more memorable. This study examined how the congruency of information about individuals’ perceived trustworthiness affected their recognition, compared to information about perceived intelligence. This was achieved by providing information about each individual’s occupation and behaviour, which could be either congruent or incongruent for either trustworthiness or intelligence. Across four experiments, it was found that individuals tagged with low trustworthy rather than high trustworthy behaviours were recognized better, but no effect of congruency was found (Experiment 1a). Conversely, face recognition with incongruent rather than congruent trustworthiness was higher in Experiment 2a. No significant effects of intelligence were observed. These findings provide partial support for an ability to remember faces linked to rarer events specifically when such ability is relevant to social exchanges (trustworthiness).