Mountain Bear said
"The 'startle effect' is an example of the over arching mental heuristic known as the recency effect. A different but related error is the primacy effect. The report makes clear that the pilot was primed to take the plane up because of the anxiety he had expressed about the plane's flight level prior to the incident. He went up because he wanted to go up; his training be damned. "
That's a great point. The same thing happened with the A300 that crashed on Long Island. The PF was overly concerned with wake turbulence and let his anxiety go to his feet, and he knocked the rudder off. To some extent it happened with the L-1011 at DFW, where the PF was spring-loaded to land in a storm when he should have gone around.