Check out the ThinkScan website.

From: CNN.com

Terrorism, a slow economy and rising gas prices are issues that can keep American voters awake at night.

Political strategists know that the most successful candidates are masters at capitalizing on fears such as these, and that can make a huge difference at the polls.

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was running for president against conservative Barry Goldwater when his campaign unleashed the “daisy ad.” It showed a little girl counting as she plucked a daisy, a mushroom cloud and then a booming voice counting down to a nuclear explosion. The baritone voice then warned that the stakes were too high not to vote for Johnson.

The ad, which ran only once, was so chilling and effective, analysts say, it helped Johnson win the presidency by one of the widest margins in U.S. history.

CNN recently gathered eight undecided voters to see how they would respond to attack ads and how the ads might affect their choices. They met at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where psychologist Drew Westen studies how brains react to candidates’ messages.

Westen, who wrote “The Political Brain,” said fear-based attack ads are effective because they tap into a voter’s subconscious.

“Those kinds of gut-level reactions tell us things like, ‘I don’t feel like this person is telling us the truth,’ ” Westen said. “Unless someone is a really good con man, those reactions are extremely helpful. The conscious brain processes only a tiny percent of information.”

Westen and his business partner, Joel Weinberger, have created software, through their company ThinkScan, that looks into a voter’s subconscious. The software does this by measuring people’s reaction time to certain words after they watch attack ads.

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