I was discussing AF447 with a friend of mine yesterday. He has a master of science in psychology. Reading the final crew conversation and asking me a lot of questions about flight AF447 itself, he came to this conclusion:
The crew was probably in a state of "cognitive bias". They selected and interpreted only those pieces of information, which did fulfill their own theory of what was happening. This mental state blocked all the "easy way outs" many of you described as "nose down / pitch and power". This is one step further from a simple "misinterpretation" of data. It takes a very strong signal from the outside to open up a way out of this mental state. And it takes time to realize, that the "reality" you fully believe you are in, is not the reality happening all around you. The strong signal was obviously missing and time was something, the crew did not have at the end...
translation:
they were confused