Background and Objectives: Math anxiety (MA) is considered to affect math achievement and the choice of math-related educational paths, thus contributing to the gender gap in STEM careers. However, despite decades of research, the mechanisms underlying the relationships between gender, MA, and math achievement remain largely unclear. One of the reasons is that different types of anxiety and math achievement levels are rarely controlled for.
Design and methods: We tested the associations between gender, MA, spatial anxiety, test anxiety, neuroticism, and math achievement in a sample of 269 adults.
Results: We replicated previous findings that spatial anxiety in areas of navigation and mental manipulation, but not imagery, mediates the relationship between gender and MA. Importantly, in light of previous contradictory findings, we found that math achievement significantly mediated this relationship. Crucially, we found that gender, spatial anxiety, test anxiety, neuroticism, and math achievement together accounted for 66% of the variance in MA, with gender uniquely accounting for only 5%.
Conclusions: The commonly reported gender gap in MA is less pronounced when other anxieties are controlled for, especially given that we did not observe gender differences in the strength of the relationship between MA and math achievement.
