Due to the challenges involved in creating a controlled, repeatable experiment I am sure there is nothing directly addressing the question. I am equally sure there is plenty of relevant material available addressing very specific aspects. This is not my field of study or interest so I cannot be precise in pointing these out. Sociologists and Psychologists have done a lot of research on things like self fulfilling prophesies, observer effects, placebo effects, the will to believe and my very general, layman's summarization of all of this is that attitude (any attitude) has a direct impact on how humans deal with any situation.

The military has a very vested interest in turning this scholarly work into practical applications. The US Marines are an excellent case in point, especially looking back to WWII. Conventional wisdom then (and now also I think) was that any unit sustaining losses exceeding 30% will be combat ineffective (basically write them all off, even the survivors, for the current battle). Several Marine units sustained losses greatly exceeding that (over 100% if you count in line replacements) and continued with their missions. This is one example of attitude making a key difference.

The military approach to survival has to be different from civilian since it must assume that escape and evasion are important in addition to simple survival. That doesn't invalidate it but it does put a specific bias into the choices that are favored.

There are also various psych studies that have been done looking specifically for good decision making under stress and many of these are probably also applicable to the topic. My very very vague recollections from the long past are that the best decision makers are those who can remain calm while focusing on the long term goal. Again this would play very strongly into survival and is something the US military specifically has been looking at for a long time.

Don't confuse a can do attitude with reckless behavior. I have known a lot of Marines, and while they vary (like the rest of us) from wild to studied they have all had a can do attitude and have been great team members. I suspect this is because everyone of them has internalized that "gung ho" really does mean all together.

- Eric