Having ceded many late nights to this portly volume, it took forceful self-persuasion to put pen to paper again to prepare this invited commentary on the commentaries about it. I am grateful to the editor for including extensive reviews of Social Foundations of Thought and Action (Bandura, 1986) in the inaugural issue of this significant forum for theoretical contributions. The thoughtful reviews by Kihlstrom and Harackiewicz and by Lerner address themselves to the nature of the causal structure of social cognitive theory. This is a well-selected focus because the model of causality serves as the central integrating principle throughout the book. The social cognitive approach posits a system of triadic reciprocal causation in which (a) action, (b) inner personal factors in the form of cognitive, affective, and biological events, and (c) environmental influences all operate as interacting determinants. The analytic decomposition of triadic causality presents formidable empirical challenges. However, the temporal dynamics of triadic reciprocality ease some of the technical difficulties of verification. The mutual influences and their reciprocal effects do not all spring forth simultaneously. It takes time for a causal factor to exert its influence. The interacting factors, therefore, work their mutual effects sequentially over variable time courses. Due to the time lags in the operation of the triadic factors, it is possible to gain some understanding of how different segments of reciprocal causation operate without having to mount a Herculean effort to assess every possible interactant at the same time. Different subspecialties of psychology center their inquiry on selected segments of reciprocality. Cognitive psychologists select the interactive relation between thought and action as their major sector of interest. They examine how conceptions, beliefs, self-percepts, and intentions shape and direct behavior. What people think, believe, and feel affects how they behave. The natural and extrinsic effects of their actions, in turn, partly determine their thought patterns and affective reactions. Social psychologists examine the segment of reciprocality between the person and the environment in the triadic system. This line of inquiry adds to our understanding of how environmental influences in the form of modeling, tuition, and social persuasion alter cognitions and affective proclivities. The reciprocal element in this segment of causation has been of central concern to the subspecialty of person perception. People evoke different reactions from their social environment by their physical characteristics, such as their age, size, race, sex, and physical attractiveness. They similarly activate different reactions depending on their socially conferred roles and status. Of all the different segments in the triadic causal structure, the reciprocal relationship between behavior and environmental events has received the greatest attention. Indeed, ethological, transactional, and behavioristic theories focus almost exclusively on this portion of reciprocity in the explanation of behavior. In the transactions of everyday life, behavior alters environmental conditions, and it is, in turn, altered by the very conditions it creates. Clarifying how the various subsystems function interactively can advance understanding of important aspects of the superordinate causal system. What has been lacking is research on how the multiple reciprocal links of influences operate together and how the patterning and relative strength of the constituent factors in the causal structure change over time. Since the publication of the Social Foundations volume, Wood and I have been conducting microanalyses of triadic reciprocal causation using a dynamic computerized environment (Wood & Bandura, 1989b). The interactional causal structure is examined within the context of managing an organization. In this series of experiments, each of the major interactants in the triadic causal structure-cognitive, behavioral, and environmental-functions as an important constituent in the transactional system (Bandura & Jourden, 1989; Bandura & Wood, 1989; Wood & Bandura, 1989a; Wood, Bandura, & Bailey, in press). The cognitive determinant is indexed by self-beliefs of efficacy, cognized goals, and quality of analytic thinking. The options that are actually executed constitute the behavioral determinant. The properties of the environment, the level of challenge it prescribes, and its responsiveness to behavioral interventions represent the environmental determinant. The constituent factors in the ongoing transactional system are measured repeatedly. The findings of this program of research have helped to clarify how composite causal structures operate and how the relative contribution of the constituent factors changes over time. As Lerner notes in his commentary, most developmental psychologists subscribe to a causal model emphasizing person-context interactions. However, almost all the research conducted within the framework of developmental contextualism examines selected segments of triadic reciprocal causation rather than the full causal structure. Our analytic tools are not as yet well equipped to encompass triadic reciprocality as it operates in the transactions of everyday life. However, microanalytic laboratory studies of triadic reciprocal causation advance knowledge on how such a causal