In sports, athletes’ sense of progress toward desired or undesired outcomes shapes their experience of psychological momentum (PM). However, progress in sports is rarely linear, leading to fluctuations in the perceived velocity of progress. In two studies, we examined how acceleration and deceleration in progress toward victory affect PM in cycling races. In Study 1, participants viewed unfolding curves representing the time gap between two cyclists in a race and judged the outcome expectation, a classical PM dimension. In Study 2, participants experienced the race from a first-person perspective in virtual reality and rated several PM dimensions such as outcome expectation, perceived momentum, and confidence. In both studies, the races simulated either catching up to an opponent (moving toward victory) or losing the lead (moving away from victory), with each occurring at an accelerating, linear, or decelerating rate within the same time frame. In both studies, as hypothesized, we found that moving toward victory elicited more PM than moving away from victory. More importantly, acceleration in the movement toward victory led to the most positive PM responses, while deceleration led to the least, despite the average progress being the same. When moving away from victory, this pattern reversed: acceleration led to the lowest PM responses, while deceleration led to the highest. Together, these studies provide support for the idea that changes in the velocity of progress toward or away from victory play an important role in shaping PM in sports.

The dataset contains two SPSS files containing the PM responses from both studies. Additionally, we shared videos of what the virtual reality trials looked like for participants in Study 2.