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Description: Matching the identity of unfamiliar faces is important in applied identity verification tasks, for example when verifying photo ID at border crossings, in secure access areas, or when issuing identity credentials. In these settings, other biographical details – such as name, or date of birth – are also often compared, but the impact of these concurrent checks on decisions has not been examined. Here, we asked participants to compare name and face information on an ID card to digital records to detect errors. Across four experiments (combined n = 274), despite being told that mismatches in name and fac e information were independent, participants were more likely to say that face images matched when names also matched. Across all experiments, we found that this bias was unaffected by image quality, suggesting that the source of the bias is somewhat independent of perceptual processes. In a final experiment, we show that this decisional bias was found only for name checks, but not when participants were asked to check ID card expiration dates or unrelated object names. We conclude that the bias is specific to biographical information and propose that it operates at the level of unfamiliar person identity representations.