150 Who Are Our Friends?
found a significant but modest correlation between mentors’ and protégés’ percep-
tion of the amount of instrumental support provided in the relationship. There was
no correlation between mentors’ and protégés’ perception of amount of psychoso-
cial support provided. Only a few of the mentors and protégés were in agreement on
the likelihood that the relationship would continue. Further, the mentors and pro-
tégés rarely agreed on how much time they spent meeting. Mentors may also expe-
rience the relationship differently as a protégé and as a mentor. Lunsford (2014)
found that senior scientists reported instrumental support as important to their
success. Yet, when these same scientists described the type of support they pro-
vided to their protégés, they were more likely to describe psychosocial support. If
instrumental support was so important to them, why did they emphasize psychoso-
cial support for their protégés? Finally, individuals do not have high agreement that
they are in a mentoring relationship. A team of researchers reported that protégés
identified individuals as mentors (who had also agreed with this designation) only
43 percent of the time, and that mentors were only somewhat better at identifying
their protégés (who had also agreed with this designation)— 54 percent of the time
(Welsh, Bhave, & Kim, 2012).
Thus, for adults, mentorship and friendship may co- occur when the relationship
is characterized by more psychosocial support with some instrumental support. For
youth, it is unlikely that an adult mentor would consider their protégé to be a friend
because of the inequalities on reciprocity. Many adult “friend- like” conversations
might constitute inappropriate disclosure if shared with a protégé who was a child
or teenager. A child might share challenges over conflict in relationships with their
parents or friends. However, an adult mentor would not ask their young protégé
for advice about their deteriorating marriage. Thus, there needs to be equality of
exchange for informal mentorships to also be friendships.
Benefits and Costs of Friendship
Friendship may both enhance and limit mentorship. Rapport is developed in the
first stage of mentoring relationships and is related to relationship quality (Cherniss,
2007). Thus, trusting, high- quality friendships may provide a strong base for a men-
toring relationship that fast- tracks these relationships through the initial stage of
developing rapport. High- quality mentorships may be characterized by the ability
of the relational partners to express negative and positive emotions and to bounce
back from challenging interchanges (Dutton & Heaphy, 2003; Lunsford, 2015b).
Individuals who are friends may have an increased ability to share their success and
failures in a mentorship. In addition, these relationships have a history that may
enable them to be more resilient after difficult interactions.
Friendship may also limit mentorship in at least three ways. First, friends may
be less likely to provide instrumental support. The work described earlier on peer