Entries by Jean Rhodes

What we talk about when we talk about transference

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by Jean Rhodes Transference is what happens when someone redirects unconscious feelings about one person onto someone else. In mentoring, a mentee might redirect his or her feelings, such as anger/disappointment with a parent, frustration with a teacher, ambivalence toward an older sibling, etc. onto a mentor. Mentors, who are typically unschooled in the nuances […]

Grabbing the fourth cookie: On luck, entitlement, and mentors

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by Jean Rhodes Here’s a story for graduation season. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a commencement address at Princeton University. The speaker, writer Michael Lewis, described a study in which researchers divided UC Berkeley students into teams of three, separated by sex. Teams were tasked with solving a moral problem […]

A match made in heaven?: Technology-delivered interventions and youth mentoring

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by Jean Rhodes A few months ago, I wrote a column “There’s an App for That,” in which I described the promise of evidence-based mental and behavioral interventions that are delivered through smartphone Apps (and sometimes computers). An even deeper dive into this research has left me even more convinced of its promise. This is […]

Challenging the “Dodo Bird Verdict” in Youth Mentoring

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by Jean Rhodes In 1936, psychologist Saul Rosenzweig coined the term “Dodo Bird Verdict” to illustrate the frequent claims that all helping relationships are roughly equivalent in terms of their effectiveness. Rosenzweig evoked a scene in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which several birds and other creatures found themselves wet and uncomfortable after a swim. […]

Meta-analysis underscores importance of perceived similarity in mentoring

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Eby, .L.T. et al. An interdisciplinary meta-analysis of the potential antecedents, correlates and consequences of protégé perceptions of mentoring. Psychological Bulletin. Advanced online publication. Summarized by Stella Kanchewa Overview: In this meta-analytic study, Lillian Eby and colleagues focused on variations in the mentees’ perceptions of relationship quality and types of support they received from their […]

What predicts mentor self-efficacy? Hint: it starts with “E”

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summarized by Stella Kanchewa, Ph.D. Larose, S. (2014). Trajectories of mentors’ perceived self-efficacy during an academic mentoring experience: What they look like and what are their personal and experimental correlates? Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 21(2), 150-174, doi:10.1080/13611267.2013.813728. Problem: Previous studies have shown that mentor’s perceived self-efficacy (MPSE), defined as the “mentor’s level of […]