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Abstract
A strong, consistent finding in the mentoring literature is that perceived similarity predicts a wide range of benefits for protégés. On the other hand, research on interpersonal relationships suggests there are also benefits to being in a relationship with a dissimilar other—something the mentoring literature often overlooks in favor of similarity. To remedy this, I integrate self-expansion theory (Aron & Aron, 1986) with Kram’s (1985) mentoring theory to predict how dissimilarity and similarity jointly impact protégé outcomes. Specifically, I predict experiential dissimilarity influences a protégé’s self-expansion and in turn relationship commitment and career self-efficacy, and that this is moderated by deep-level similarity. These hypotheses were tested in a sample of online participants who were currently in informal or formal mentoring relationships. Results indicated that experiential dissimilarity and deep-level similarity had independent rather than interactive relationships with self-expansion, and self-expansion in turn was related to relationship commitment and career self-efficacy.