I once read an article about a psychological study where the researchers wanted some insight into the thoughts and actions of a person who believes he is about to die.
There are ethical challenges in setting up a laboratory study like this, so they turned to a different resource–cockpit voice recordings from aircraft accidents.
The researchers concluded they could not get anything meaningful from this study, because what they heard was two professionals analyzing, discussing, and doing all they could to rectify the situation. No panic, no freezing up, no thought of their own personal fate.
Just trying to understand and fix the problem.