Justice
A Most Unusual Way of Preventing Litter
Researchers say images of angry, watching eyes reduce littering by as much as two-thirds.
Imagine crumpling up a leaflet and tossing it in the gutter. Now think of doing it again, but with a leaflet printed with big, pissed off-looking eyes.
You probably feel less inclined to throw the paper on the ground, according to a new study from the U.K.’s Newcastle University. After performing an experiment which found that posters of angry eyes deterred bike theft by as much as 62 percent, ethologist Melissa Bateson and compatriots tried a similar test with littering. They went about their campus draping bicycles with flyers that ostensibly were bicycle-theft reminders. One type featured an image of a U-lock, another showed severe peepers: