Another related point which was drawn clearly to me many years ago is that most experienced pilots (in regard to mental determination/motivation) are quite different to the average Joe in the community - and this fits quite nicely with a disciplined approach to operations.
In our CRM refreshers at one period, a party trick was to seat two people on opposite sides of a table but with a divider between so that neither could see the other. The one would have some arrangement of objects in front of him, the other the same objects but jumbled. The task was to communicate sufficient information from the one to the other (against a tough clock limit) to end up with the jumbled objects in the same arrangement as the ordered objects.
I was always rather amazed that pilot pairs would near invariably work it down to the alarm even after the goal had become patently unachievable. Non-pilots in the same role play exercise very often threw their hands up in despair as soon as the goal-time situation became difficult.