No it DOES have to do with visual perception, as the quotation explains. Thus when you look at mountains your brain knows they are big and and scales them up, the camera records their visual size as it is from there - hence the disappointment. You certainly don't need a wide-angle, which would only make them seem smaller. A tele lens tends to compress perspective, things look closer together, so the mountains will loom over closer objects and look more like your brain's adjusted image of them.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.