The Roles of Protégé Race, Gender, and Proactive Socialization Attempts on Peer Mentoring

The problem and the solution. A within-subjects design was used to examine the roles of newcomer race, gender, and proactive socialization attempts on potential mentors’ willingness to engage in peer mentoring. In this laboratory study, 110 White college students participated. Participants were encouraged to participate as mentors in a new peer mentoring program and were provided with the profiles of 12 potential protégés and asked to evaluate each. Results of repeated-measure ANOVA suggested that female participants were more likely to provide mentoring than were male participants and that mentors were more agreeable to mentoring those who were high in proactive socialization attempts regardless of protégés’ race or gender. However, protégé demographic characteristics did influence access to peer mentoring for protégés depicted as low or moderate in proactivity. A discussion of these findings and their implications for human resource development research and practice are offered.