Control
In cruise in an airliner, for a cruise climb (that is, to the next useable level) you super duper machine has the performance only to sustain about one degree more of pitch. Yank the nose up more and you WILL loose speed (and continue doing that and you will stall eventually).
I can understand that in a startle reaction, a pilot might yank up the nose a bit too high (INITIALLY), but then very quickly he should realize from looking at his attitude, as indicated on his attitude indicator, clearly and unequivically, without any error or failure, if unsure, check the other guy's attitude indicator and the standby attitude indicator, all independant, extremely reliable sources, realize immediately that he has flown the aircraft into a not normal attitude and just correct the attitude to normal values, such as you stare at for endless hours during your whole career: the blue side up, the brown side down, dividing line between those colors approximately in the middle, wings approximately level - it isn't more difficult than that!
It is not a question of automatics not playing ball - when the autopilot tripped off, due to pilot action, the pilot flying did not start flying until 9 seconds later. That is a human issue, to not attend to your aircraft for such a long time, not an automatics issue.
Peekay4
The leans, exactly. Kind of funny, that the sensory ilusions (or failures of our senses) are used to make simulators seem so close to reality, but that apparently pilot training does not prepare you sufficiently for the real sensory illusions in flight.