What motivates runners? Focusing on the “how” rather than the “why”

(Press-News.org) As attention turns to this year’s New York City Marathon, observers will again ask a long-standing question: What do athletes draw upon when trying to complete this 26.2-mile run, especially at those stretches when finishing seems impossible? 

Many might think that when fatigue sets in, the key to perseverance is reminding oneself why the effort is worth it or focusing on reasons why they set the goal—intuition that lines up with motivational posters, sports psychology clichés, and coaching advice.    

However, a new study by a team of New York University psychology researchers finds that runners get to the finish line more so by using focused attentional tactics than by reflecting on the larger goal of completing the race.

“As a run progresses and gets harder, runners don’t intensify the degree to which they reflect on ‘why’ they should finish as much as they narrow their attention to focus on the task at hand,” explains Emily Balcetis, an associate professor of psychology at New York University and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (JESP). “While keeping in mind the reasons behind their overall goal, they dramatically heighten their focus on specific milestones and sub-goals within the run. They keep their goal in mind, but even more so, they keep it in sight. Importantly, these two cognitive regulation strategies are not one in the same. They are distinct, complementary strategies.” 

The JESP paper follows an earlier 2025 study on attentional focus conducted by Balcetis and her colleagues. It found that narrowing visual attention—zooming in on the finish rather than taking in the surroundings—serves as a powerful self-regulation strategy that can boost both effort and performance.

The newly published JESP research includes surveys with recreational and competitive runners. The researchers surveyed approximately 1,000 runners who ran at slower and faster paces. They were about to or just recently competed in two types of races: a single 10-mile race and multiple 5-kilometer races. The surveys asked runners when, during a race, they used “narrow” vs. “wide” visual attention and when they deployed implemental “how” mindsets vs. deliberative “why” mindsets over the course of a run. 

“People in implemental mindsets plan specific steps, manage details like pace or breathing, and focus on how to accomplish their goal,” explains Jordan Daley, an NYU research fellow and one of the study’s authors. “By contrast, people in deliberative mindsets weigh pros and cons, consider alternatives, and evaluate the desirability or feasibility of continuing with a goal. We find that these two mindsets, both of which are used by runners, do not directly correspond with the way that runners focus their attention, demonstrating that mindset and attention can be decoupled and potentially used to address different types of challenges during goal-pursuit.”

In the surveys, runners reported the following:

Compared to slower runners, faster runners began a race with a narrower focus than did slower runners and all runners increasingly narrowed their attentional scope as the run progressed.

Overall, runners were more likely to adopt an implemental mindset at each stage of a race rather than a deliberative one—focusing on the how rather than the why. 

However, runners’ mindsets were not related to attentional focus. Attentional scope shifted dramatically over the course of runs while mindsets, whether implemental or deliberative, only shifted modestly, suggesting an independence between attention and mindset. They are separate strategies runners use as races grow more difficult.

“This work shows that attentional scope and motivational mindsets are distinct tools runners have available to support training and performance,” concludes Balcetis. “This separation between motivational mindset and attentional scope upends the intuitive assumption that ‘belief in the goal’ is the strongest antidote to physical strain. It’s not belief or abstract motivation that carries runners through, but practical strategies for doing. The mental muscle that matters most is not the why but the how.”

The study also included Bradley Tao and Bryce Lexow—researchers in Balcetis’s Social Perception Action and Motivation Lab at the time of the research. 

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