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The Social Psychology of Health and Illness is concerned with social psychological processes, especially those that explain or modify the structural causes of health and health-related behaviors or through which their social consequences are realized. It corresponds most closely to the following description from the Committee on Certification in Medical Sociology (1986): “the behaviors or actions taken by individuals to maintain, enhance, or restore health or cope with illness, disease, or disability; people’s attitudes, and beliefs about health, disease, disability and medical care providers and organizations.” For some researchers in the Social Psychology of Health and Illness, health is a lens into more general social psychological processes; for others, social psychology offers theories and concepts that illuminate health-related processes. Regardless of orientation, social psychologists of health and illness direct our attention to proximate health-related processes, especially those at the level of interpersonal interaction.

This subfield is as broad as sociological social psychology itself, encompassing interactionist analyses of self and identity in illness (Charmaz 1991), experimental studies of the health implications of small group processes (Taylor 2016), and multilevel analyses of the social determinants of health (House 2002). What distinguishes research in this subfield from descriptive Social Epidemiology is its emphasis on process (i.e. how outcomes are accomplished) and on subjective experience. Process and subjectivity are relevant to a range of topics, encompassing the onset and course of illness and disease, and individual and social responses, including help-seeking. The Social Psychology of Health and Illness can also be contrasted with health psychology (Taylor et al. 1997). Much like the distinction between sociological and psychological social psychology, the fundamental difference is defined by the primacy given to the analysis of social arrangements versus individual dispositions.

While research in the Social Psychology of Health and Illness draws inspiration from diverse theoretical traditions, among the most common orienting concepts are stress, identity, and stigma. The stress process framework and its constituent concepts (stressors, social support, and coping) provide explanations for health inequalities inasmuch as social groups differ in their exposure to stressors and their access to resources for managing stress (Aneshensel 1992; Pearlin 1989; Turner et al. 1995). Identity processes have been invoked to analyze variation in stress responses. For example, research shows that racial/ethnic identity can moderate or buffer the association between discrimination and health (Mossakowski 2003; Sellers et al. 2003). Identity processes have also been shown to have broader application in studies of how self and identity change in response to illness (Charmaz 1983). Stigma responses become incorporated into illness identities, shape the course of illness, and influence decisions about help-seeking (Pescosolido et al. 2008).

Because of its breadth, studies in this subfield defy easy categorization. Studies can address a broad range of topics. They can be quantitative or qualitative; based on surveys, interviews, or experiments. We offer two examples that illustrate the breadth, as well as the common elements, of research in the Social Psychology of Health and Illness.

Carr and colleagues (2017) used data from the Disability and Use of Time supplement from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to evaluate the extent to which marital/partner strain and support moderate the association of disability with emotions among older adults, and whether those patterns differ by gender. They found that relationship support helps to protect women with severe impairment from feelings of frustration, sadness, worry, and negative mood, but the same support was associated with heightened distress for men, perhaps because men find support threatening to their sense of competence. The buffering effects for women suggest that emotional support may foster positive reinterpretations of disability and provide emotional resources to manage adjustments to roles and activities. This study exemplifies the Social Psychology of Health and Illness in that it uses social psychological concepts to shed light on health-related processes while also yielding insight into the social psychology of gender.

In a very different study, Kaiser (2008) analyzed in-depth interviews of women with breast cancer to explore how they interpret and use the survivor identity. She observed that, although some women embraced the identity, others rejected it. Women who rejected the identity cited fear of recurrence, not being sick enough to justify the label, and discomfort with the implied social identity as reasons for the rejection. Kaiser (2008) concluded that cultural images of cancer survivorship can be alienating and distressing to some women with cancer. By applying the concept of identity to the cancer illness experience, Kaiser (2008) highlights the centrality of the self to the experience of illness and to treatment responses.

Although different in their theoretical underpinnings and methodological approaches, these two studies are nevertheless related through their use of social psychological concepts to analyze the processes through which social conditions produce health and illness and the individual and social responses that follow. Both show how structural arrangements and cultural beliefs shape proximate life experiences and, finally, health.