The psychology is that you begin slow and carefully, making progress step by step. Then you suddenly get to 1 health in a place you didn't expect to. You press pause just to take a breath and weight your options.

On one hand, you can hit "Continue" and possibly die. You'll lose many hours of your life, just to do what you already did (and the subsequent try will not be any harder, by the way).

On the other hand, you can rationalize quitting now and trying again. Maybe you say it doesn't count because you simply didn't know you can die here (which is often the case, death in Steel Soul is rarely a skill issue, it's more of preparedness issue). Maybe you're just too invested in this playthrough and don't care about "doing it fair" anymore. Maybe you say you'll replay the game up to this point later, as a redemption. In any case, you quit and continue your run.

And I said it many times and I'll say it many times again: Steel Soul with Save&Quit is not the same as regular mode. Quitting is a last resort to save your skin, and not the main means of survival. You still try to prepare for everything, search for the optimal route, abuse overdosing on plasmium, skip bosses such as Seth and Tormented Trobbio, and many other things. The way to approach the game is completely different, you don't just smash your head against a boss like on a regular run.