1. The Assumptions of a Culture-centered Perspective:
Paul B. Pedersen 

2. The assumptions of a culture-centered perspective:
Culture is complicated and complexity is your friend
You belong to more than one culture at the same time
Behavior is not meaningful data out of context

3. The "New Psychological Rules" in a multicultural context:
Social significance more than statistical significance
Predicting consequences more than causation
Interpretation of data more than statistical elegance
Language and discourse more than simple answers
Holistic perspective more than atomistic

4. The "New Psychological Rules" in a multicultural context (continue)
Particularities more than universals
Context based more than context free analysis
Subjectivity more than objectivity
Tolerance of ambiguity more than dissonance reduction
Complementary alternatives rather than orthodoxy

5. Cultural encapsulation occurs more now than ever before:
Overemphasizing diversity into hostile stereotypes
Overemphasizing universals by a dominant culture
Polarizing diversity/universalist alternatives
Defining reality according to monocultural assumptions
Being insensitive to cultural variations

6. Cultural encapsulation occurs more now than ever before (continue)
Protecting unreasoned assumptions against challenge
Preferring a technique-oriented simple solution
Reluctance to evaluate alternative viewpoints fairly
Following the fundamental attribution error
Preferring exclusion to inclusion

7. The "Up-side" of a culture-centered perspective:
Accurate assessment, meaningful understanding and appropriate interventions
Constructive conflict management based on common ground shared positive expectations
Articulate awareness of the thousand "culture teachers" accumulated in a lifetime
Healthy socio-ecosystems with a diversity of culturally different choices for each decision
Protection from a monocultural encapsulation by our own self reference criterion

8. The "Up-side" of a culture-centered perspective (continue):
An opportunity to rehearse adaptive functioning skills for our multicultural futures
Providing multiple perspectives toward social justice and multicultural moral development
Applying the quantum metaphor by emphasizing both cultural similarities and differences
Expanding learning through inclusionary growth to increase synergy and enhance discovery

9. The "Up-side" of a culture-centered perspective (continue):
To enhance spiritual completeness by linking culturally different spiritual perspectives
Developing pluralistic systems for building pluralistic organizational structures
Strengthening psychological intervention theories by making culture central rather than marginal.

10. Developing multicultural awareness:
Becoming aware of one's culture teachers presence
Constructing your own cultural identity
Understanding how culture controls behavior
Learning to be comfortable with diversity
Accepting that all situations are multicultural
Identifying culturally learned assumptions

11. The Intrapersonal Cultural Grid

12. Developing multicultural knowledge:
What you do and don't do is political
Knowing about other specific cultures
Learning how other cultures perceive you
Understanding all things as symbolic
Comprehending that nothing happens by accident

13. Culturally learned assumptions of the dominant culture:
The fixed definition of normal
The universal importance of individualism
The encapsulation of professional boundaries
The dependence on abstract jargon
The universal pathology of dependence

14. Culturally learned assumptions of the dominant culture (continued):
The relative unimportance of support systems
The primacy of linear thinking
The necessity for individuals to adjust
The irrelevance of history
The presumption of self awareness

15. Developing multicultural skill:
Generating a diversified response repertoire
Sending and receiving messages accurately
Taking the perspective of others
Changing the system when appropriate
Changing the individual when necessary
Recovering when you have made a mistake

16. Negative multicultural conflict:
Different behaviors presume negative expectations
Each partner tries to get back or get even
The more powerful will force others to adapt
Potential friends become enemies

17. Positive multicultural conflict:
Behaviors are perceived in their cultural context
Different behaviors are lined to Positive expectations
Behaviors interpreted according to positive expectations
Harmony of different behaviors becomes an asset

18. The cultural context gives meaning to behavior:
Similar behaviors have different meanings
Different behaviors have similar meanings
Out of context behavior has no fixed meaning
Judging behavior out of context is dangerous

19. Conclusion: Complexity is your friend
Cultural assumptions are the foundation of awareness
Cultural facts are the structure of knowledge
Cultural actions are the opportunities for skill