If you're still watching ABC's summer-doldrums mashup of reality TV and epic fantasy, The Quest, you're probably wondering why Christian Sochor is still on the journey, and perhaps hoping he'll be banished tonight.
The reality competition challenges 12 "paladins" against the scripted high-fantasy backdrop of Everealm, and goes to fairly great lengths to immerse them in a hero's journey.
Living in a castle, training in the yard, performing feats of strength and skill for a beloved queen and a shadowy vizier, the paladins complete the Fates' challenges to avoid the bottom 3, lest they lose another challenge and get banished by the other paladins. At the end of this Survivor-like process the One True Hero emerges to wield the Sunspear against the coming evil.
Christian Sochor, who was apparently selected for his "sword fighting talents" in the New York Renaissance Faire, has failed most of his challenges and doesn't seem to have the "heart of a hero" everyone keeps talking about.
In episodes 1, 2 and 3, Christian landed in the bottom three, lost the Fates' challenge, and was saved overwhelmingly by the other paladins, even after many of them expressed reasonable reservations about his performance.
"We had told Christian that the only way you're gonna make it any further if you get the bottom three again is to win the fates challenge," Patrick Higgens said in the third episode -- right before they saved Christian again.
Adria Kyne was intent, as were a few others, that Christian has "skills" yet to teach them.
He avoided the bottom three by sheer luck in episode 4, and Jasmine Kyle was banished having initially entered the balance-beamed Battle Dome to fight the much larger Patrick and MMA fighter Shondo Blades.
The way the show is edited, Christian spends an awful lot of time talking a big game. So is that why all the other paladins keep saving him despite is repeated failures?
Maybe.
According to a small study published Wednesday, overconfident people easily fool other people into believing they merit all that confidence. So-called "self-deceived" individuals, as such, are more likely to receive promotions. Similarly, study participants who underrated themselves were underrated by others, regardless of performance that proved otherwise.
This seems like a particularly powerful tool to wield among a group of self-professed fantasy nerds, several of whom admit they've never believed in themselves -- until they dressed up and mounted a horse for the show.
"We think this supports an evolutionary theory of self-deception," said study author Dr. Vivek Nityananda of Newcastle University. "It can be beneficial to have others believe you are better than you are and the best way to do this is to deceive yourself -- which might be what we have evolved to do."
It's certainly getting Christian through The Quest so far, but what realm wants a self-deceived One True Hero?
Episode 5, "Under Siege," airs Thursday night at 8/7C on ABC.