ABSTRACT
Anyone who has ever faced the “who started it” question with arguing children (or adults, for that matter) knows that two waves of data are insufficient for answering it. The simple action–consequence observation is often misleading, as the real “event” that caused the arguing has occurred earlier (sometimes much earlier) and for reasons very different than currently recognized. Every parent thus knows that we do not live in a two-wave world and certainly not a cross-sectional world. More broadly, every person, group, organization, and culture has an ongoing history that determines its present state. This history and present state, in turn, influence how we view the future, the manner in which we interpret the world around us, and the choices we make. If we do not understand the history of a particular situation, then it becomes difficult to understand what is occurring and why it is occurring. Trying to make sense of our world is nearly impossible when viewed from a cross-sectional lens. Observing an event at “Time 1” and seeing the consequence at “Time 2” might offer a bit more insight than a cross-sectional perspective, but not much more.
