You may have seen them wielded by prank-loving grandmas in department stores, peeking out from robotic vacuum cleaners, or adorning statues on college campuses. But googly eyes, those cartoon-like eyeballs often found in arts and crafts projects, aren’t just good for making people smile. If you ask researcher Kacy Kim, when used correctly, a set of sticky little eyes can be a clever tactic to influence consumers — specifically, to get them to buy fruits and vegetables that might otherwise become food waste.

An associate professor at Bryant University, Kim is the lead author of a recently published study in the journal Psychology & Marketing that found that when googly eyes are placed on pictures of irregular-appearing vegetables, or human names are used to describe misshapen fruits, consumers are more inclined to buy “ugly” produce.

The team was inspired …

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