Dominant actors are neither liked nor respected, yet they are reliably deferred to. Extant explanations of why dominant actors are deferred to focus on deferrers' first-order judgments (i.e., the deferrers' own private assessment of the dominant actor). The present research extends these accounts by considering the role of second-order judgments (i.e., an individual's perception of what others think about the dominant actor) in decisions to defer to dominant actors. While individuals themselves often have little respect for dominant actors, we hypothesized that (1) they think others respect dominant actors more than they do themselves, and (2) these second-order respect judgments are associated with their decision to defer dominant actors above and beyond their own first-order respect judgments. The results of four studies provide support for these hypotheses: across a variety of contexts, we found evidence that individuals think others respect dominant actors more than they themselves do (Studies 1–3), and perceptions of others' respect for dominant actors is associated with individuals' own decisions to defer to them, above and beyond first-order respect (Studies 3–4). Results highlight the importance of considering second-order judgments in order to fully understand why dominant actors achieve high social rank in groups and organizations.

占主导地位的演员既不被喜欢也不被尊重，但他们被可靠地推迟了。对主导行为者为何被推迟的现有解释集中在推迟者的一阶判断（即，推迟者自己对主导行为者的私人评估）。本研究通过考虑二阶判断的作用（即个人对他人的看法）扩展了这些解释。考虑主导行为者）在决定服从主导行为者的情况下。虽然个人本身通常很少尊重主导行为者，但我们假设（1）他们认为其他人比他们自己更尊重主导行为者，并且（2）这些二阶尊重判断与他们决定将主导行为者推迟到上面和超越了自己的一阶尊重判断。四项研究的结果为这些假设提供了支持：在各种背景下，我们发现证据表明个人认为他人比他们自己更尊重主导行为者（研究 1-3），并且对他人尊重主导行为者的看法与个人自己决定服从他们的决定，超越一阶尊重（研究 3-4）。