The present study investigates whether epistemic cognition in moral domain (dubbed
metaethical cognition) develops analogously to epistemic reasoning
regarding empirical knowledge. The study’s conceptual framework
distinguishes two main areas of metaethical cognition (beliefs about the nature of
moral judgments and conceptions of the process of moral judgment formation), and
three metaethical stances (intuitionism, subjectivism, and transsubjectivism). In a
sample of 200 adolescents (M 1/4 16.18 years, SD 1/4 2.41), these
metaethical stances could be reliably identified by means of a semistructured
interview procedure. Adolescents’ metaethical stance was related to age,
cross-sectionally as well as longitudinally. Furthermore, significant differences in
metaethical cognition were found between high school students and an expert group of
university students with special training in moral philosophy. Overall, metaethical
and epistemic stances were correlated substantially. Findings demonstrate that
metaethical reasoning development is a structural analogue of epistemic development
regarding factual knowledge. Implications for studies on moral development and for
research addressing the domain specificity of epistemic reasoning development are discussed.
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