ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the computational approach and highlights its added value for theory construction and verification. It first discusses the qualitative changes in research that have emerged in recent years as a result of new technologies and statistical methods. The new approaches currently co-exist alongside traditional research methods in social psychology, however there is reason to suspect that the shift toward computational methods will accelerate as they become increasingly familiar to psychologists, particularly to those who have grown up in an era of high-speed computers, electronic communication, and social networks. The chapter then describes significant changes in theoretical focus engendered by the computational approach. As in other areas of science, the tools that are available constrain the phenomena that can be investigated. The chapter explains the integrative potential of computational social psychology. This approach is clearly heuristic, generating new lines of research and opening the door on a host of important phenomena.
