A good 80% of the battle is in the mind. Lost person behavior is a topic of many SAR trainings for a reason - when someone is lost without a plan in place, they fall prey to their own minds, and do things that are not rational by the standards of people who study wilderness safety and understand what to do. Even experienced backpackers will "lose it" when they are turned around. Reading Deep Survival illuminates some of the whys behind this sort of thing.

People will refuse to backtrack, to turn around and follow their own footprints back to more known territory. They'll wander up and down believing their mental map is correct. They'll NOT walk out and wave at the helicopter flying over them - one particular instance was when we searched for two backpackers out along Mono Creek. The doctor and his friend were hiking along and the friend wanted to take a short cut down a snowbank. Doc said no, and some time later turned around to discover his friend had just done it, and was now lying quite a distance below and not responding to shouts. Doc made his way down and assessed - the friend had gained too much speed, fallen, hit his head on rocks and was now clearly in an altered state. Doc set up his friend's tent and put him in, covered him up, and went for help. Doc got lost. The helicopter flew over the meadow he set up his tent in a couple of times, then took the time to land and interview him - only to find out he was one of the missing hikers. He did NOTHING to get the helo's attention.

Granted, his friend was as good as dead (he did die) when he struck the rock. He was probably in an extreme state of shock and not really functional. But, this experienced backpacker and intelligent man did not use a signal mirror, tarp, or any other method of signaling the searchers.

We all like to think we will do what we believe is correct, but there are times that "correct" is just what makes sense to us at the time. One of the reasons I try to practice some of the survival skills often is to commit them to the sort of memory that still functions when adrenalin is in play, and shock, and that semi-altered state that we enter when suddenly the best thing you can do is to stay calm, because it's also the hardest thing to do.

I do carry a signal mirror because it is easier to aim precisely with it.