Introduction. Getting higher medical education in specialty and residency programs is an important stage of doctor's formation. Medical activity implies emotional intensity and a great number of factors that cause stress. Emotional burnout syndrome is not only the result of neuropsychological stress, but also the consequence of uncontrollable stress. Research aim: to determine the predictors of emotional burnout syndrome development in students of higher medical education programs (specialist and residency). Materials and methods. The sample of 330 students undergoing specialist and residency programs at Yaroslavl State Medical University of the Ministry of Health Care of Russia and 50 doctors from different medical organizations of Yaroslavl region was used as a control group to estimate their thinking styles, types of thinking and creativity as well as factors of cognitive appraisal of difficult life situations and to analyze their interrelation and impact on a burnout syndrome component. Statistical data processing was carried out using Kolmogorov-Smirnov criterion with Lillifort and Shapiro-Wilk correction, Spearman rank correlation coefficient, Mann-Whitney U-test, Student's t-criterion, Pearson's χ² test, and factor analysis (ANOVA) based on Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test and multiple logistic regression analysis. Study Results. It was found that in all three comparison groups the practical thinking style was significantly more frequent (p≤0.05). From the types of thinking reliably more often (p≤0,05) students use figurative, residents – combined, and doctors – sign type. When analyzing the SES phases, reliable differences were found in the predominance of the frequency of occurrence of only the formed phase "Resistance" in doctors over residents (p=0,016). In a comparative analysis of more difficult situations (≥4 points) between groups, it was found that significantly more students compared to residents have common signs of difficult life situations (p=0.008), significantly more strong emotions are experienced by students compared to residents (p=0.0003) and to doctors (p=0.006). Correlation analysis showed: for students the presence of direct links of medium strength between the sign type of thinking and "strong emotions", emotional detachment and "future perspective"; for residents the presence of direct and inverse links of very weak and weak strength, which can be neglected. Factor analysis revealed the main components in each group under study that described the influence patterns of the factors of cognitive evaluation of life situations on certain burnout symptoms with the highest percentage. Conclusion. Logistic regression analysis revealed a number of cognitive evaluation factors as predictors of burnout and, vice versa, a number of burnout symptoms can act as predictors of some cognitive evaluation factors.