Sam Barnett is a 26-year-old hedge fund chief executive and pro tennis player, and also a PhD student studying neuroscience in marketing at Northwestern. His current research includes monitoring people's brains as they watch presidential debates. That's where CNN's Brian Stelter caught up with him. Barnett was showing a room full of brain-monitored Democrats, Republicans, and independents one of the Republican presidential debates, and one thing stood out pretty clearly: Everyone's neural activity shot up when Donald Trump was talking.
"Everyone in the room is sharing some sort of neural bond," Barnett said. "Everyone is feeling the same kind of attention, the same kind of underlying passion, at least." Trump led audience engagement among everyone — Democrats, Republicans, independents, women — except men; Marco Rubio engaged men slightly more than Trump. Barnett compared the Trump effect to putting dogs in TV ads. "People of all different walks of life like seeing a dog in a commercial," he said. "It's cute and engaging and interesting, and, you know, maybe people are feeling similarly about Donald Trump." More realistically, Stelter said it probably reflected Trump's skills honed over a decade of hosting a reality TV program. You can watch Barnett demonstrate his research below. Peter Weber
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