Chapter 6 - A Macro Cultural-Psychological Theory of Emotions

Abstract

This chapter explains a theory called macro cultural psychology, which explains how emotions and all psychological phenomena are rooted in macro cultural factors, such as social institutions, artifacts, and cultural concepts. Emotions have cultural origins, characteristics, and functions. Macro cultural psychology has the potential to illuminate the cultural features of emotions that are not only cultivated by the cultural institution of the school (system), but also by other macro cultural factors, and brought into academic activities inside and outside the school. Macro cultural factors are social (institutional), material (artifacts), and conceptual formations. They are vast, complex, planned, coordinated, administered, objectified, and enduring. They are humanly constructed through struggles among competing groups. Moreover, they are political in the sense that they are contested and controlled by vested interests. Also, they are modifiable through conscious, collective action at the macro level. At the same time, individuals, psyches, and biologies are the active agents that form macro cultural factors. However, they do so collectively, not as separate entities, and the macro cultural factors they form, then outrun or transcend individuals and actually constrain their behavior.