The history of the social sciences’ most significant transformation is connected to globalization and the increased connectivity of the global community. The most interesting event is the development of advanced technology, such as neuroimaging, that allows scientists to study the subjects’ brains. This event is exciting and essential for the social sciences because it will enable connecting the theoretical hypothesis about how people function with the scientific proof — the image of their brain activity. Neuroscience, however, applies to the study of groups and not only individuals.
Neuroscience began as a way of addressing the research in psychology, studying the imagery of an individual’s brain. The social sciences branch of neuroscience emerged in the 1990s. The focus of the scientists working in this field was on how social interaction impacts the persons’ physiology and vice versa. This is an exciting event in social science because it provided a new perspective for the scientists. Instead of studying social interactions as a psychological phenomenon, without regard to biology, they began to review different aspects of it.
This event changed the way we study individuals, groups, and things since it allowed collecting new types of data. Other technological developments that emerged alongside neuroimaging provided opportunities to store and analyze information in quantities that could not be imagined before. In terms of studying groups, this allowed reviewing group interactions in a new light. In a way, this technology allowed social scientists to collect better proofs that can be checked by peers, helping establish better validity for some of the experiments’ results. Overall, in the timeline of social sciences development, the invention of neuroimaging is the most interesting event.