Stress: social psychological theme with variations

Context and relevance. To date the focus of attention of scientists has been on the causes and manifestations of stress at all levels of analysis, from the micro-level, be it genome or cells, to the macro-level, be it culture and society. However, the theoretical knowledge, through the prism of which it is proposed to look at stress and coping with it, distinguishes the present work from the works of national and foreign authors known to the reader. Aim: The aim of the proposed review is to analize the potential of social psychological knowledge (namely, attribution theories, social comparison theory, social representations theory, social identity approach) for the study of stress and coping with it. A significant aspect of this review is the analysis of stress and coping in the context of the social identity approach. The discussion focuses on experimental results obtained in different contexts, thus allowing the assumption of the role of social identification and social support in relation to coping with stress to be accepted. Conclusions. The analysis of the empirical studies demonstrates the potential of social psychological knowledge for coping with stress in an organisational context as well as in a chronic illness situation. This contributes to the expansion of the information space of Russian scientists by familiarizing them with the trends of modern foreign socio-psychological knowledge. This text sets out a series of new horizons in the development of social psychological knowledge, the purpose of which is to address issues of stress and coping strategies.

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