The development of personality across the human life course may be observed from three
different standpoints: the person as actor (behaving), agent (striving), and author (narrating).
Evident even in infancy, broad differences in social action patterns foreshadow the long-term
developmental elaboration of early temperament into adult dispositional traits. Research on
personal strivings and other motivational constructs provides a second perspective on
personality, one that becomes psychologically salient in childhood with the consolidation of�…