Relevance. It is traditional for socio-psychological research to study a large social group as a subject of social representations, rather than experiences — in other words, in existing studies, attention is paid mainly to the cognitive component of the “group response” to certain social events. T.G. Stefanenko argued that the socio-psychological approach to the study of changes in society should include an analysis of not only the processes of social cognition regarding newly emerged or transformed social objects, but also emotional reactions, unconscious expectations, and fears caused by changes, general feelings and experiences. This position involves the inclusion of new categories in the conceptual apparatus of psychological knowledge, as well as clarifying the content of existing categories. In this case, we are talking about such a category as collective experiences.

Objective. Description of the theoretical and empirical problems that T.G. Stefanenko was directly involved with in the research project “Perezhivanie (experiencing) Social Problems with Representatives of Various Social Groups of Modern Russian Society” (Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation, 2012-2014).

Methods. Review and analysis of research on the study of perezhivanie, collective perezhivanie,and social emotions.

Results. The basic approaches to the study of perezhivanie, collective perezhivanie,and social emotions in Russian and Western psychological literature are considered. The concept of “collective perezhivanie” is compared with the category of “perezhivanie” developed in Russian general psychology, as well as the construct “collective (social) emotions” developed in Western social psychology. The results of an international cross-cultural study of social emotions (guilt, shame, regret, embarrassment, etc.) in which T.G. Stefanenko took part are briefly described.

Conclusion. Despite methodological difficulties and the lack of unity in the conceptualization of collective perezhivanie,the study of social perezhivanieand emotions seems to be a fruitful approach to empirical socio-psychological studies of the characteristics of perception and interpretation of various social processes at the level of everyday consciousness