Mentors as Friends 143difficulties. However, friendships can also have negative effects, such as increased
stress (Reis et al., 2000), when they are filled with strife and discord.
Researchers have characterized friendship as having both a deep and surface
structure (Hartup & Stevens, 1997). Deep structure refers to the social meaning of
relationships. Surface structure characterizes the social exchanges at any moment.
Reciprocity is an important dimension of friendship. Friendships differ in their
content, constructiveness, closeness, symmetry, and effective character (Hartup &
Stevens, 1997).
Mentorship
Mentoring was first described in the Iliad over 2,500 years ago. The English word
“mentor” comes from Greek and refers to the man’s name who served in this role
when he looked after and guided Odysseus’s son. Scholarly attention is much more
recent. The organizational and psychological literature on mentoring began in the
late 1970s and mid- 1980s from Levinson’s (1978) and Valliant’s (1977) work on
adult development. A commonly accepted definition of mentoring refers to the
behaviors involved in mentoring, which is said to occur when a more experienced,
usually older, person provides support and career advice to a junior, less experi-
enced person (Eby et al., 2013).
However, an examination of the literature suggests mentoring researchers also
define mentoring through roles (e.g., Clark, 2000), behaviors (Ghosh, 2013), and
relational processes (Waterman & He, 2011). Scholars who define mentoring
through roles ask individuals about their official titles or job duties. An example
of this would be to assume mentoring is occurring if a person serves in a role such
as a doctoral advisor (e.g., Lunsford, 2011) or to assume mentoring is occurring
based on a person indicating he or she had a mentor or a protégé (Clark, Harden, &
Johnson, 2000).
There is more agreement on the behaviors of mentoring, which have been clas-
sified into functions: instrumental support and psychosocial support (Allen, Eby,
Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004; Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Kram, 1985). Instrumental sup-
port, also known as career support, includes behaviors such as sponsorship, pro-
viding challenging assignments, visibility, coaching, and protection. Psychosocial
support involves listening, confidence building, and empathy. The psychosocial
function of mentoring is similar to support that friends provide. Some researchers
advocate for role modeling to be a separate function (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). Role
modeling involves providing behaviors that the protégé may emulate. However,
even in a functional perspective the behaviors mentors exhibit may vary accord-
ing to the context. Ghosh (2013) compared the functions of mentoring in the
educational versus business work settings. His review of the literature suggested
that mentors in education value critical reflection while mentors in business focus
on challenging assignments. Note that the functional perspective implies that