What is it about?

Many people feel anxious when they have to deal with mathematics, whether in school, at work, or in everyday situations such as understanding bills, loans, or statistics. This study examined how strongly math anxiety is linked to math performance around the world. We combined representative data collected between 1980 and 2022 from students and adults in 90 countries. The results show a clear and consistent pattern: Individuals with higher math anxiety tend to achieve lower results in mathematics. This relationship was found across different age groups and countries. We also found several systematic differences in how strong this relationship was. It was especially strong among individuals with average or high math performance. The link was weaker for worrying thoughts about math than for emotional reactions or difficulties concentrating during math tasks. It also became somewhat weaker after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In addition, the relationship was stronger in economically wealthier countries. We also examined whether this relationship differs between women and men. Overall, gender differences were negligible in recent decades. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, the negative relationship between math anxiety and math performance was stronger among women than among men.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Mathematics plays an important role in education, access to many careers, and participation in modern societies. Confidence with numbers is also relevant in everyday life, for example, when interpreting financial information, comparing offers, or understanding statistics in the news. If anxiety interferes with mathematical performance or leads people to avoid math-related learning opportunities, it can have long-term consequences for educational pathways and career choices. Our findings suggest that math anxiety is not a minor issue affecting only a small group of learners, but a widespread challenge observed across countries and populations worldwide. This makes math anxiety relevant not only for researchers, but also for teachers, schools, families, employers, and policymakers. Reducing math anxiety may help improve learning outcomes, widen participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, and support more equitable access to important quantitative skills.

Perspectives

What we find particularly interesting about this study is the combination of representative data from 90 countries and an individual participant data meta-analysis, a method that combines person-level data across many studies to provide especially precise and nuanced evidence. Rather than relying mainly on small convenience samples, the study draws on large-scale population data collected over several decades. This offers a broader and more realistic picture of how math anxiety is related to math achievement across different countries, age groups, and historical periods. Because of both the global scope and the analytic approach, we see the findings as especially robust, trustworthy, and generalizable. The study not only confirms that math anxiety is consistently linked to lower math achievement, but also provides new insights into when, for whom, and under which conditions this relationship is stronger or weaker.

Lena Keller
Christian-Albrechts-Universitat zu Kiel

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: High math anxiety is associated with lower math achievement across 90 countries: An individual participant data meta-analysis of representative student and adult samples., Psychological Bulletin, February 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/bul0000514.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page