Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 10, 2026
07:14
Virtual Agent for Real-Time Motivational Interviewing by Integrating Adaptive Nonverbal Behavior and Language Models
Published on: December 23, 2025
Deconstructing serendipity: focus, purpose, and authorship in lunch buddy mentoring
Timothy A Cavell1, Joye L Henrie
1Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas.
New Directions for Youth Development
|July 29, 2010
Summary
Lunch buddy mentoring offers a unique school-based approach for aggressive or bullied children. This program focuses on short-term, context-specific interactions to improve social standing and peer relationships.
Area of Science:
- Educational Psychology
- Child Development
- School Counseling
Background:
- School-based mentoring programs aim to support vulnerable students.
- Traditional mentoring often emphasizes long-term relationship building.
- Elementary students exhibiting aggression or bullying require targeted interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and conceptualize the 'lunch buddy mentoring' program.
- To explore novel mechanisms of change in school-based mentoring.
- To understand how context-specific interactions impact mentees.
Main Methods:
- Describes the structure of the lunch buddy mentoring program.
- Highlights the twice-weekly, semester-long mentor-mentee interactions during lunch.
- Focuses on peer-related social mechanisms rather than relationship depth.
Main Results:
- Proposes enhanced social reputation as a key outcome.
- Suggests positive peer interactions as a primary mechanism.
- De-emphasizes relationship strength and duration for therapeutic impact.
Conclusions:
- Lunch buddy mentoring offers a distinct model for supporting at-risk youth.
- Temporally proximal and context-specific provisions are central to its effectiveness.
- The program's framework aligns with concepts of focus, purpose, and authorship in mentoring.
Related Concept Videos
01:29Self-Serving Bias
Self-serving bias is a cognitive phenomenon in which individuals attribute positive outcomes to internal factors such as their abilities, intelligence, or effort while attributing negative outcomes to external circumstances. This cognitive distortion helps maintain self-esteem but can also impede objective self-assessment.Theoretical Explanations of Self-Serving BiasTwo primary theories explain the self-serving bias: the cognitive explanation and the motivational explanation.The cognitive...
03:26Framing Effects
Information is everywhere and its presentation—such as how and when items are presented—can impact our perceptions and decisions surrounding the info. This broad concept umbrellas framing effects—influences that occur due to the way information is framed in its appearance, whether it’s purely the order or the specific wording of a message. Let’s take a look at numerous ways in which two versions of something can objectively say the same thing, yet we respond in different ways based on the...
01:12Hindsight Biases
Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?
01:52Persuasion Strategies
Researchers have tested many persuasion strategies, including the foot-in-the door and the door-in-the-face techniques, in a variety of contexts. Ultimately, the principles are effective in selling products and changing people’s attitude, ideas, and behaviors (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004).
01:23Techniques of Therapeutic Communication II: Focusing, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
Focusing involves centering a conversation on a message's critical elements or concepts. Focusing is valuable if the talk is vague or patients begin to repeat themselves. Sometimes, when patients are asked about their symptoms, they may go off-topic and try to tell their entire life story. Respectfully, the nurse should bring the conversation back into focus.
This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The...
This therapeutic technique can also be used when a patient brings up pertinent information during a health-related conversation. The...
02:57The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
According to Charles Cooley, we base our image on what we think other people see (Cooley 1902). We imagine how we must appear to others, then react to this speculation. We don certain clothes, prepare our hair in a particular manner, wear makeup, use cologne, and the like—all with the notion that our presentation of ourselves is going to affect how others perceive us. We expect a certain reaction, and, if lucky, we get the one we desire and feel good about it. But more than that, Cooley...