Journal article
Mathematics anxiety: effects of age, gender and culture
- Abstract:
- Many studies have indicated that mathematics anxiety is a significant problem for many people and is an important topic for research. Mathematics anxiety is multidimensional. In particular, it is important to distinguish between worry and emotionality components, and between trait and state anxiety. Much research shows a reciprocal relationship between mathematics anxiety and performance adding to the importance of gaining a greater understanding of the factors involved in mathematics anxiety. This paper reviews some studies of factors that have often been found to be associated with mathematics anxiety: age, gender, and culture. Most studies suggest that mathematics anxiety increases with age, and that the relationship between mathematics performance and at least some aspects of mathematics anxiety increase with age. Most, though not all, studies, indicate that females experience more mathematics anxiety than males, and some suggest that there are gender differences in the relationship between mathematics anxiety and performance. Most studies show cultural differences in mathematics anxiety, while also suggesting that the relationship between mathematics anxiety and performance is fairly uniform across cultures. Cross-cultural studies in this area are. however, somewhat limited by the fact that culture is usually confounded with nationality. Moreover, there are studies of all these factors that give somewhat conflicting results, and more research needs to be done in order to gain clearer answers. The paper concludes a discussion of the practical implications of the findings so far about the influences of age, gender and culture on mathematics anxiety.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 449.9KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/bjep.70057
Authors
+ Economic and Social Research Council
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/03n0ht308
- Grant:
- ES/W002914/1
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Journal:
- British Journal of Educational Psychology More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-01-07
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-12-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2044-8279
- ISSN:
-
0007-0998
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2353216
- Local pid:
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pubs:2353216
- Deposit date:
-
2025-12-21
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Ann Dowker
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- © 2026 The Author(s). British Journal of Educational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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