Rather than storing information exactly as experienced, human memory is vulnerable to distortions from misleading information. This study investigates whether and how short-term memory illusions for a face are influenced by the characteristics of a distractor face, specifically its trustworthiness and racial features. While prior research has shown that facial perception is susceptible to social and perceptual biases, the interaction between distractor characteristics and memory distortion remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining whether a distractor face can alter the memory of a target face, depending on the distractor’s trustworthiness and race. Participants were shown a pair of faces sequentially (one target and one distractor) and, after a short (0.5s) or long (3s) delay, asked to identify the target from two options. The target and distractor face varied in level of trustworthiness and race (Black vs. White). A within-subjects design and repeated-measures ANOVAs were used to analyze whether the features of the distractor influenced participants’ memory of the target face and whether the time interval had any effect on this. While most main and interaction effects did not reach statistical significance, a significant three-way interaction was found between interval length, trustworthiness difference, and chosen trustworthiness (p = .016, η²ₚ = .256). This suggests that the effect of trustworthiness differences on face memory may depend on the chosen face and the time available for memory to decay. However post hoc tests examining specific bias did not yield significant results, suggesting that no clear support was found that congruent bias errors are larger in the longer interval condition. This research contributes to our understanding of how social cues and perceptual biases interfere with short-term memory, highlighting the susceptibility of face memory to contextual interference. These findings have implications for real-world scenarios such as eyewitness testimony and social decision-making, where memory accuracy for faces is crucial.