The Psychology of Friendship - Oxford University Press (2016)

Mentors as Friends 147

relationship to be forced by the nature of the program, but it was very natural and
genuine.”
Thus, what started out as peer mentoring turned into friendship for many of
these students. The peer mentors provided instrumental support. However, the
peers who also formed close ties, shared personal information— that is, provided a
lot of psychosocial support— also appeared to be developing friendships. In many
instances the new students described how their mentor had become a friend, with
whom they could share their hopes and worries about college. The peer mentors
wrote about their hopes of redefining their peer relationship as a friendship or how
they hoped to continue to meet. Thus, as the ties became closer the students seemed
to move from peer mentoring to friendship.

Developmental Networks

The traditional, one- on- one intense relationship describes what most individuals
think of when asked to describe a mentor– protégé relationship. Yet, we now know
that individuals may form different kinds of mentoring relationships. Over the
last decade, mentoring researchers have expanded the definition of mentoring to
include all relationships that involve career support, also called a developmental net-
work (Baker & Lattuca, 2010; Higgins & Kram, 2001).
The term “developmental network” refers to a continuum of mentoring support
from a variety of individuals. The networks are characterized by their density, range,
and relationship strength (Higgins & Kram, 2001). Density refers to the extent to
which network members are connected to one another. Range refers to how much
information is duplicated by network members. Strength refers to the closeness of the
relationship. Developmental networks have four essential characteristics (Dobrow
et al., 2012). First, mentors are focused on advancing the protégé’s career. Second, there
are multiple individuals in the network (usually four or five). Third, these networks
include people from a range of social circles and include peers and family members.
Fourth, individuals provide varying amounts and types of psychosocial and career sup-
port. Some individuals in a developmental network may also provide friendship.
The overlap of developmental networks and friendship is illustrated by a study
of 477 advanced doctoral students in a variety of disciplines (Lunsford, 2012). The
majority (97%) of the doctoral students had at least one mentor, and most of the
students (85%) had more than one mentor. One- third of the students had four or
more mentors, including their advisor. Many students reported receiving emo-
tional, career, and networking support from family, friends in their program, and
friends outside their program. Doctoral students who reported having several fac-
ulty mentors in the same department had a low- range network because their men-
tors were from the same social system. In addition, these faculty members would
know one another, therefore the student would have a high- density developmental
network. In contrast, students who had mentors from different social spheres, for