With eye-tracking glasses and special watches, McMaster studying voter reactions during election debate

Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton are out to "make democracy better" by studying a group of young people as they watch and react to the leaders' debate Thursday evening.

In what they're calling a "Canadian science first," the university's LIVELab and Digital Society Lab are collaborating to monitor eye movements and heart rate of 40 to 50 undecided voters while they watch the English-language debate.

John McAndrews, managing director of the Digital Society Lab, said the project aims to understand "how we can make democracy better in the digital age."

He said the university is using three different types of measurements to "better understand the audience experience of this debate." 

The group of eligible voters aged 18 to 34 will wear special watches, coded by the lab's team, to track heart rates as well as eye-tracking glasses. Subjects will also be given surveys to "observe their political views," said McAndrews.

Researchers say they will be able to understand things such as debate moments which may prompt more engagement or when viewers may be distracted or less engaged. 

He said the combination of the three measurements is what makes the study unique.

The LIVELab stands for Large Interactive Virtual Environment. It is part of the university's Institute for Music and the Mind.

Lauren Fink, who's part of THE LIVELabs executive team and an assistant professor in the psychology department, said the lab is usually used for studying experiences and reactions during on-stage performances.

"This is really why I'm in academia," she said, adding neither lab could have done the project without the other.

"We've spent all this time using these tools in musical context ... But when John came to us with this idea, it was really cool to think, 'Okay, how can we apply these tools to what's going on in the political world right now?'"

Study will take months to analyze

The idea, born just weeks ago when the election was called, had been "bubbling around" McAndrews' mind since his first day at McMaster in 2022, when he had a meeting at the LIVELab.

"I thought, 'wow, they do this for musical performances, could they do it for a political debate?'" he said.

He said they chose this specific group of voters, young and undecided, because of capacity limits, but also because it is the group who "might have the strongest experience in the debate."

"We're more focused on wanting to be able to say something concrete, one specific takeaway, even if we are limited a little bit in generalizability to the full population," said Fink.

• Read all of CBC Hamilton's coverage of the federal election here. 

Two of Fink's PhD students will be looking at the data coming in Thursday evening, she said, and lab staff and volunteers will help manage the people and the space. Analyzing the data will likely take a few months, however. 

Fink said with the equipment, the research team will be able to see exactly what people are looking at.

"So, for example, people tend to blink when they finish parsing information like at the end of a phrase boundary or something like that. People tend to look at what they're paying attention to," she said.

She said the team would also analyze if people were really engaged at a particular moment or if they're getting distracted and disengaged. 

"At moments where there starts to be an argument, do we see heart rate increasing? Do we see people kind of leaning up in their seats?" she said.

The importance of political debates

McAndrews, who's also a political science assistant professor, said it's important the study be done while the debate is live, so subjects are reacting without any prior knowledge of what went on during the debate, but also because of the uncertainty of it all.

"That possibility of just being able to observe that, given the dynamism, the unpredictability, is just so exciting for me as a social scientist," he said.

McAndrews said debates like Thursday's can sometimes have an impact on the way campaigns shape out.

"Thinking about the American context, it was Joe Biden's debate performance last year that ultimately forced him from that race," he said.

With Mark Carney as the new Liberal Party leader and Pierre Poilievre in his first general election as Conservative Leader, McAndrews said this will be an important opportunity for voters to see them in these new roles.

The English-language debate, moderated by TVOntario's Steve Paikin, starts at 7 p.m. ET.  It can be viewed on CBC-TV, CBC News Network and livestreamed on CBC News, including the CBC News app.