Cognitive Ethical Design and Evaluation of Productive Reinforcing Spiral Model to Mitigate the Challenge of Extreme Polarization

The polarization of ideas is a natural phenomenon of human behavior. When productive, it can generate scenarios for reflection on arguments, opinions, and interactions, but when polarization is extreme, it generates social isolation, manipulation, perception of injustice, unproductive debates, certainties of absolute truths, fanaticism, feelings of hatred, and even wars. Deconstructing the ecosystem of extreme polarization directly benefits social stability. Virtual social environments are excellent scenarios for fostering debates, negotiations, and the exposition of ideas. The objective of this study is to use the same virtual social ecosystem with its empowerment mechanisms and influence attributes to support the creation of tools, functionalities, and simulations to develop healthier systems. The knowledge generated supported the development of a design and cognitive ethical affordances practiced in metacognitive design, optimized navigation, and metacognitive simulations. The cognitive, ethical affordances incorporated into the Productive Reinforcement Spiral method model were part of a metacognitive simulation of collaborative negotiation with a productive reinforcement spiral mechanism, whose description and evaluation of the design are the main objectives of this paper.