Math anxiety predicts how much effort people are willing to put into doing math.

Previous research suggests that math anxiety, or feelings of apprehension about math, leads individuals to engage in math avoidance behaviors that negatively impact their future math performance. However, much of the research on this topic explores global avoidance behaviors in situations where math can be avoided entirely rather than more localized avoidance behaviors that occur within a mathematics context. Since the option to completely avoid math is not common in most formal education systems, we investigated how and if math avoidance behaviors manifest for math-anxious high school students enrolled in math courses. Given previous research highlighting the utility of effortful study strategies as well as recent findings identifying a relation between math anxiety and the avoidance of math-related effort, we hypothesized that math anxiety would be associated with decreased planned engagement of effortful study strategies by students and that such effort avoidance would result in worse performance on a high-stakes mathematics exam. We found (N = 190) that the majority of students ranked problemsolving as the most effortful study strategy and that math anxiety was associated with less planned engagement with effortful problem-solving during studying. Moreover, the avoidance of effortful problem-solving engagement partially mediated the association between math anxiety and exam performance, marking it as a potential target for intervention.

Math anxiety – negative feelings towards math – is hypothesized to be associated with the avoidance of math-related activities such as taking math courses and pursuing STEM careers. Surprisingly, however, there is little experimental evidence for the math anxiety-avoidance link. Such evidence is important for formulating how to break this relation. Here, we hypothesize that math avoidance emerges when one perceives the costs of effortful math engagement to outweigh its benefits and that this perception depends on individual differences in math anxiety. To test this, we developed an effort-based decision-making task in which participants chose between solving easy, low-reward problems and hard, high-reward problems in both math and non-math contexts. Higher levels of math anxiety were associated with a tendency to select easier, low-reward problems over harder, high-reward math (but not word) problems. Addressing this robust math anxiety-avoidance link has the potential to increase interest and success in STEM fields.

Success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is often believed to require intellectual talent (“brilliance”). Given that many cultures associate men more than women with brilliance, this belief poses an obstacle to women's STEM pursuits. Here, we investigated the developmental roots of this phenomenon, focusing specifically on young children's beliefs about math (N = 174 U.S. students in Grades 1–4; 93 girls, 81 boys; 52% White, 17% Asian, 13% Hispanic/Latinx). We found that field‐specific ability beliefs (FABs) that associate success in math (vs. reading/writing) with brilliance are already present in early elementary school. We also found that brilliance‐oriented FABs about math are negatively associated with elementary school students’ (and particularly girls’) math motivation—specifically, their math self‐efficacy and interest. The early emergence of brilliance‐oriented FABs about math and the negative relation between FABs and math motivation underscore the need to understand the sources and long‐term effects of these beliefs.Research Highlights Field‐specific ability beliefs (FABs) are beliefs about the extent to which intellectual talent (or “brilliance”) is required for success in a particular field or context. Among adults, brilliance‐oriented FABs are an obstacle to diversity in science and technology, but the childhood antecedents of these beliefs are not well understood. The present study (N = 174) found that FABs that associate success in math (vs. reading/writing) with brilliance were already present in Grades 1−4. Brilliance‐oriented FABs about math were negatively associated with elementary school students’ (and particularly girls’) math motivation—specifically, their math self‐efficacy and interest.

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