Moral judgement in adolescents: Age differences in applying and justifying three principles of harm

One of the central questions in moral psychology concerns how individuals arrive at moral judgements. Kohlberg’s (1969) cognitive developmental theory famously argued that moral judgements are the result of conscious reasoning about justice that undergoes ontogenetic development. Recently there is growing interest in alternative accounts emphasizing non-conscious, intuitive cognitive processes as the source of moral judgements (e.g., Cushman, Young, & Hauser, 2006; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001).