As the anticipation for this year’s New York City Marathon builds, a perennial question resurfaces among athletes, coaches, and sports psychologists alike: What mental mechanisms empower runners to endure the grueling 26.2-mile course, especially during those punishing moments when the temptation to quit feels overwhelming? Conventional wisdom often suggests that mental toughness stems from an intense reflection on the reasons behind the runner’s goal. Motivational posters, elite coaching advice, and sports psychology literature frequently emphasize focusing on the “why” — the higher purpose or personal meaning driving the effort.
However, groundbreaking research from New York University’s Department of Psychology reveals a more nuanced and, perhaps, counterintuitive dynamic at play. This new study, featured in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (JESP), demonstrates that runners leverage focused attentional strategies far more than prolonged existential reflection to push through the toughest phases of their runs. Instead of dwelling on abstract motivations, athletes sharpen their concentration on immediate tasks and proximal targets, which serve as critical stepping stones toward the overarching objective.
Emily Balcetis, the study’s lead author and an associate psychology professor at NYU, elucidates this discovery by highlighting that runners increasingly “keep their goal in sight,” not merely in mind. According to Balcetis, this distinction between maintaining a cognitive representation of the goal and directing visual and attentional resources toward tangible sub-goals is pivotal. She explains that as physical strain mounts, runners do not intensify ruminations about why they should finish; rather, they narrow their attentional focus to manageable fragments of the race, like focusing on the next mile marker or maintaining rhythmic breathing. These complementary yet distinct strategies—goal contemplation and attentional narrowness—operate in tandem to support endurance performance.
The study builds upon earlier work by the same team, which investigated how visual attention modulation could influence athletic output. Their 2025 study demonstrated that narrowing the field of view to emphasize the finish line, as opposed to the broader environment, boosts both exertion and race performance. This cognitive zooming effect appears to reduce distraction and bolster task-specific effort, thereby serving as a self-regulatory mechanism. The new research advances this understanding by decoupling attentional focus from motivational mindset—a nuanced cognitive interplay rarely explored in athletic psychology.
In an extensive survey of nearly 1,000 runners participating across different race formats—including single 10-mile runs and a series of 5-kilometer events—the researchers collected first-person data on attentional scopes and mental framing during races. These participants, ranging from recreational joggers to competitive athletes, reported when they employed “narrow” versus “wide” visual attention and when they switched between “implemental” (how-focused) and “deliberative” (why-focused) mindsets. The granular nature of this self-reported data permitted a sophisticated analysis of how cognitive strategies evolve in real-time under physical duress.
Co-author Jordan Daley, a research fellow at NYU, describes the core differentiation between mindsets: “Implemental mindsets involve the granular, tactical planning necessary to execute goal-directed behavior. This includes pacing, breathing control, and managing physiological states.” Meanwhile, deliberative mindsets revolve around weighing options, considering motivation, and reframing the desirability of continuing. Interestingly, the study found these cognitive modes are relatively stable and bear little correlation with the fluctuations in attentional focus experienced during a race.
Quantitative analysis of the survey responses revealed several illuminating trends. First, faster runners generally began their races with a more constricted attentional focus than slower runners, suggesting that early engagement with precise, task-specific cues may confer a competitive advantage. Furthermore, as all runners progressed through their respective races, there was a marked increase in attentional narrowness, which appears to function as a coping strategy amidst escalating fatigue and environmental challenges.
In contrast to the dynamic variation in attentional focus, shifts between implemental and deliberative mindsets were more gradual and modest. This dissociation underscores a critical insight: attentional scope and motivational mindset operate along independent axes, enabling runners to dynamically tailor cognitive strategies depending on situational demands. This independence allows runners to harness a toolkit of mental approaches rather than rely on any single, static mode of thought.
These findings challenge deeply entrenched assumptions in sports culture about the primacy of goal belief and abstract motivation in overcoming physical hardship. Balcetis emphasizes that “mental muscle” is not primarily about ruminating on the reasons for exertion but about crafting and deploying practical, real-time strategies that facilitate task execution. The cognitive agility to shift into a narrow, action-oriented focus—essentially the “how” rather than the “why”—emerges as the key psychological lever for endurance success.
The significance of distinguishing between these cognitive processes extends beyond marathon running and offers profound implications for broader theories of goal pursuit and self-regulation. The decoupling of attentional focus and mindset points to specialized neural and psychological mechanisms that can be harnessed not just in sports but in any domain requiring sustained effort under pressure—such as academic performance, occupational tasks, and rehabilitation.
This research was made possible with contributions from team members Bradley Tao and Bryce Lexow, both affiliated with NYU’s Social Perception Action and Motivation (SPAM) Lab at the time of data collection. The collaborative effort melded expertise in cognitive psychology, motivational theory, and applied sport science, generating a richly detailed understanding of the mental architecture supporting endurance.
Future research could explore neuroimaging and real-time physiological monitoring to map how brain regions associated with executive control and attentional shifting interact during high-intensity exercise. Such investigations may illuminate the neurobiological substrates underpinning the strategic mental narrowing observed, as well as how motivational mindsets influence persistence at a systemic level.
As the NYC Marathon draws near once more, these insights might inform novel coaching methodologies and mental training regimens, equipping athletes with cognitive tools designed not just to “believe” in their goals but to tactically “see” and execute them in actionable units. Ultimately, success on the marathon course appears less about abstract belief and more about disciplined attentional focus—a revelation that could revolutionize how endurance sports are mentally approached.
Subject of Research: People
Article Title: Keeping the goal in sight and in mind: The association between visual attention and motivational mindsets among runners
News Publication Date: 9-Sep-2025
Web References:
- https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/emily-balcetis.html
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103125001039?dgcid=author
- https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2025/june/runners-improve-performance-by-narrowing-their-visual-focus.html
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2025.104822
References: Balcetis, E., Daley, J., Tao, B., & Lexow, B. (2025). Keeping the goal in sight and in mind: The association between visual attention and motivational mindsets among runners. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Keywords: Psychological science, Physical exercise
