Debate watch: USF researchers use sensors to measure body's response to debates

TAMPA, Fla. - Who won the debate? Professors at USF are working on a scientific answer.

Ahead of Wednesday's Democratic debate, they outfitted three dozen students and professors with sensors on their fingers to measure how their sweat glands react as they watched the debate.

The frequency and size of the opened sweat glands, the deeper the participant's reaction. The sensors measure the glands five times a second.

"It is so [small] they wouldn't even notice it," said Geoff Gill of Shimmer Americas, the company that makes the sensors.

When a candidate delivered an impactful statement, like this one from Elizabeth Warren:

"We need as much help for as many people as possible."

Or this from Amy Klobuchar:

"When you see troubled waters, you don't blow up a bridge, you build on."

And this from Bernie Sanders:

"Somehow or another, Canada can provide universal health care at half the cost."

Those were the moments when debate-watchers' bodies reacted, whether they knew it or not.

The sensors only measure the intensity of the reaction and not necessarily if they liked what they were hearing. That's why USF marketing professor Rob Hammond says the sensors are the perfect tool for marketing professors to bring to politics.

They want to know what brings a reaction and what doesn't?

"Politics is marketing," he said. "If you think about the message of how I am packaging up a particular sense of what I want to say, and I want to make sure it appeals to a segment of the population, that's marketing."

In this case, the brain is not in the way of opinion.

"If they know what to say and how we are going to respond, then maybe politicians will say the right things and we can fall in line," said Sanjay Mahendrasah, a USF student.

Professors say it takes several hours after the debate to correlate the data the sensors collected with who was speaking.