Elevation and mentoring: An experimental assessment of causal relations |
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Authors: | Andrew L Thomson Jeanne Nakamura Jason T Siegel Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi |
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Institution: | Division of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, 123 E 8th St, Claremont, CA 91711, USA |
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Abstract: | Mentoring is a prosocial behavior in which an experienced person guides someone with less experience. Elevation refers to the responses elicited when a person witnesses others upholding the highest standards of moral virtue. Three experimental studies bring these two domains together. For all three studies, participants were randomly assigned to either read a story of someone exhibiting moral excellence or to a control condition. Participants in the elevation condition reported feeling more elevated, more positive attitudes toward mentoring, less negative attitudes toward mentoring, greater intentions to become a mentor (Study 1); an increased proclivity to gather information about becoming a mentor (Study 2a); and, an increased tendency to engage in mentoring directly via submitting advice to students (Study 2b). In their totality, the current studies link another prosocial outcome with elevation and demonstrate a condition under which individuals are more likely to be motivated to become a mentor. |
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Keywords: | mentoring elevation positive emotions prosocial behavior |
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