The research showed that math anxiety prevented people from improving their math skills. Students who had math anxiety and wanted to improve their grades ended up avoiding difficult problems.
Researchers from the University of Chicago have established a link between math anxiety and math avoidance. Previous researchers in the area have always suspected that there existed a link but until now, that link had been impossible to prove.
Findings of the research on math anxiety
The study found out that people who had math anxiety tend to avoid math subjects altogether. In cases where it was beneficial for them to learn math as it would increase their monetary edge, the research found that these people still did not make an effort to learn it. Nothing motivated them enough to push them into solving mathematical tasks.
University of Chicago doctoral student Jalisha Jenifer, who led the study with postdoctoral scholar Kyoung Whan Choe explained this by saying,
You can be motivated to do well in something, but still make suboptimal decisions in subtle ways.
The study was conducted on 500 adults aged between 18 to 35 years. It involved giving participants two sets of tests, one which involved math problems and the other word problems. The tests in both categories would include easy tasks and hard tasks.
Computer adaptive tasks adjected to 70percent level
The participants were also notified that the tasks would be computer adaptive and, therefore, would adjust the hard problems to 70 percent to their level. For each correctly answered easy problem, the student would get two cents while hard problems would get six cents.
The research found that participants were more willing to attempt hard word problems but when it came to maths, they were not as enthusiastic. Although they were being paid much more on solving hard tasks, the participants’ fear outweighed their willingness to solve hard math problems which had better returns.
The research also suggested that fear and math anxiety also led to people not trying to improve their math ability. An example that the study illustrated is on students wanting good grades in math who ended up spending too much time studying problems that do not challenge them.
Chloe, one of the researchers, indicated that, by understanding why these students are anxious about solving difficult math problems, she was optimistic that a solution could be found to mitigate this anxiety. She also indicated that policymakers could also use the research and data to help in the development of curriculums that encourage the learning of math.
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