A stimulus set of people famous to current generation Australian undergraduates, with recognition norms for face images and names

Abstract

Objective Who is famous varies across countries, time and generations. We provide a stimulus set of famous faces and names, plus corresponding recognition norms, useful to Australian researchers testing current generation young adults.

Methods We created a new face stimulus set, and normed these for recognition by young adult Caucasian Australians, aged 18-32 years, in 2018-2019. Face images were all recent, typical‐appearance, high‐resolution photographs of the target person. To ensure cultural exposure to people famous in Australia (e.g., local politicians), participants had lived in Australia for most or all of their lives. Participants were asked to identify 114 potentially‐famous Caucasian people, then indicated whether they knew each person or not from their name. For 49 of the famous people, recognition rates come from sample sizes of N = 119-143 participants. The remainder are from smaller sample sizes (N = 22-46).

Results Of the names, 89/114 were recognised at ≥90% accuracy. A subset of 45 people were highly famous from both name‐and‐face. Other subsets had mid‐range recognition accuracy, suitable for name and/or face priming studies. We also report each face image's expression (happy vs. not) and perceived face age (young, middle aged, or older), and provide a set of 24 similar‐attractiveness non‐famous faces.

Conclusions Our stimulus set of famous faces/names, and data on their degree of famousness, may be valuable in many areas of Australian psychological research (e.g., into face recognition mechanisms, social context priming, memory, personality) and practice (e.g., diagnosis of developmental prosopagnosia). The face set is available from the authors.